The history of opera in the Arabic speaking world is generally viewed to have started from the premiere of Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's Aida

Aida

Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...

in Cairo at the Khedivial Opera House

Khedivial Opera House

The Khedivial Opera House or Royal Opera House was the original opera house in Cairo, Egypt. It was dedicated on November 1, 1869 and burned down on October 28, 1971....

 in 1871, though Verdi's opera was sung in Italian.

Western operas sung in Arabic

Ratiba El-Hefny

Ratiba El-Hefny

Ratiba Hefny born in 1931 in Cairo, Egypt, is an Egyptian and an international Opera singer who has performed in more than 500 opera performances. She was the dean of the Higher Institute of Arabic Music in Cairo...

 sung the title role in Cairo in Lehár

Franz Lehár

Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...

's The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...

in Arabic in 1961. This was followed by Verdi's La traviata

La traviata

La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

in Arabic in 1964 and Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

's Orfeo ed Euridice

Orfeo ed Euridice

Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...

in 1970. This era ended with the 1971 fire at the Khedivial Opera House.

On March 6, 2008, at the 8th Al-Ain Classical Music Festival at Al Ain

Al Ain

Al Ain |Spring]]), also known as the Garden City due to its greenery, is the second largest city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the fourth largest city in the United Arab Emirates. With a population of 374,000 , it is located approximately 160 km east of the capital Abu Dhabi and about...

 in the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

, Polish opera director Ryszard Peryt

Ryszard Peryt

Ryszard Peryt is a Polish opera director, conductor, producer and actor. He is also a librettist, having written the libretto of Zygmunt Krause's Balthazar.-References:...

 directed Egyptian musicologist

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

 Aly Sadek's translation of Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

, as performed by soloists, the choir of the Université Antonine

Antonine University

The Antonine University is a Roman Catholic University in Baabda, Lebanon administered by the monks of the Antonine monastery....

, Baabda

Baabda

Baabda is the capital city of Baabda District as well as the capital of Mount Lebanon Governorate, western Lebanon. Baabda was the capital city of the autonomous Ottoman Mount Lebanon....

, Lebanon, and the Warsaw Philharmonic's Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Zbigniew Graca. The project planned to present other Mozart opera in the Arabic language, e.g. The Marriage of Figaro

The Marriage of Figaro

Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...

and The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....

and record on the Opera in Arabic label.

Original compositions in Arabic

The first opera in Arabic may be that of the Lebanese composer Wadih Sabra

Wadih Sabra

Wadih Sabra was a Lebanese composer and founder of the National Higher Conservatory of Music in Lebanon. As a composer his music is characterized as a blend of Western and Eastern musical languages, incorporating the strengths and charms of both traditions...

, whose opera The Two Kings to a libretto by Father Marun Ghusn, was premiered in Beirut in 1927 but has since been lost.

Egyptian composer Aziz El-Shawan

Aziz El-Shawan

Aziz El-Shawan was an Egyptian composer of classical music...

's Antar (1948, based on the life of Antarah ibn Shaddad

Antarah ibn Shaddad

 'Antarah Ibn Shaddād al-'Absī عنترة بن شداد العبسي was a pre-Islamic Arabian hero and poet famous both for his poetry and his adventurous life. What many consider his best or chief poem is contained in the Mu'allaqat...

) and Anas el-Wugood

Anas el-Wugood

Anas el-Wugood is an opera in Arabic by the Egyptian composer Aziz El-Shawan. It was written in 1970 but not premiered until 1995.The plot is based on a character from the Arabian Nights, Uns el Wujud "Delight of the World," who was beloved by the fair Zahar el-Waard "Flower of the Rose"....

(1970) are on historical themes as are his countrymen Sayed Awad

Sayed Awad

Sayed Awad was an Egyptian composer of contemporary classical music. He began his career as a violinist for the orchestra of the Cairo Opera House and later lived for many years in Jordan. He studied in Moscow with the Russian violinist and conductor David Oistrakh and received a Ph.D...

's The Death of Cleopatra, based on the epic poem by Ahmed Shawqi

Ahmed Shawqi

Ahmed Shawqi was the great Arabic Poet-Laureate, an Egyptian poet and dramatist who pioneered the modern Egyptian literary movement, most notably introducing the genre of poetic epics to the Arabic literary tradition...

, and Kamel El-Remali

Kamel El-Remali

Kamel el-Remali is an Egyptian classical composer. His opera in Arabic Hasan Al-Basri is based on the life of Hasan of Basra.-References:...

's opera Hassan El-Basri, based on the life of Hassan El-Basri. Modern Egyptian composer Sherif Mohieddin's Miramar is to a libretto by Sayed Hegab after Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...

's novel of the same name.

Dutch composer Michiel Borstlap

Michiel Borstlap

Michiel Borstlap is a Dutch jazz pianist and composer.Borstlap started playing piano at the age of 5 years....

 was commissioned by the Emir of Qatar to write the opera Ibn Sina, based on the life of Avicenna

Avicenna

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...

, performed in Qatar

Qatar

Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...

 in 2003.

Among composers of Art song in Arabic

Art song in Arabic

The western classical-style art song has attracted many songs on translations of Arabic texts, notably by composers of French melodies and German Lieder, but few art songs sung in Arabic....

, Hiba Al Kawas has not composed a full opera in Arabic, but her cycle

Song cycle

A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...

 of five instrumental and three song pieces Rou'ia Fi Maa received its première at the Opéra Bastille

Opéra Bastille

L'Opéra Bastille ' is a modern opera house in Paris, France. It is the home base of the Opéra national de Paris and was designed to replace the Palais Garnier, which is nowadays mainly used for ballet performances....

 in Paris in 2007.

In August 2011, Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....

's Youth Orchestra in Ramallah

Ramallah

Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...

 produced the opera The Sultana of Cadiz, based on a pasticcio of music by Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola was a Spanish composer. He was nicknamed the "Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was also a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young...

 to a new libretto by Paula Fünfeck after an Arabic fairy tale at Ramallah's Cultural Palace. The opera was commissioned and conducted by Anne-Sophie Brüning of the Barenboim-Said Foundation.

Opera houses and venues

The new Cairo Opera House

Cairo Opera House

The Cairo Opera House , part of Cairo's National Cultural Center, is the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital. Home to most of Egypt's finest musical groups, it is located on the southern portion of Gezira Island in the Nile River, in the Zamalek district west of and near downtown...

 (1988), the Damascus Opera House

Damascus Opera House

Damascus Opera House is the national opera house of Syria. It is located in central Damascus, on the Umayyad Square. It was inaugurated on May 7, 2004.-History:...

 (2004) and the Qatar Opera House are multipurpose arts venues. The old Beirut Opera on Martyr's Square was converted first into a cinema, then into a Virgin Megastore

Virgin Megastore

Virgin Megastores is an international chain of record shops, founded by Sir Richard Branson on London's Oxford Street in early 1971. Virgin Megastores are best described today as entertainment retailers....

. In April 2010, Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

reported that China will spend $40 million to build a 1,400-seat opera house in Algiers.