1. The Barber of Seville (of course) by Gioachino Rossini (there's also an earlier version by Paisiello), and The Barber of Baghdad by Peter Cornelius. The former needs no introduction; the latter is a comic German opera which is based on one of the tales in the The Thousand and One Nights, and which premiered in 1858 with Franz Liszt conducting.
2. Pennsylvania native Samuel Barber (1910-1981) wrote Vanessa, with a libretto by Menotti, which premiered at the Met in 1958 and won a Pulitzer Prize; and Antony and Cleopatra, which was commissioned for the opening of the new Met in 1966 and was a critical and box office failure, largely, it is said, due to Zeffirelli's overblown production. He also wrote the less-known A Hand of Bridge, which premiered at the 1958 Spoleto Festival. His most famous compositions are the Adagio for Strings and the vocal piece Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
3. Fedora Barbieri (b. 1920), Italian mezzo-soprano who made her Met debut as Eboli in Don Carlos on the opening night of Sir Rudolf Bing's regime; Marianna Barbieri-Nini (1820-1887), Italian soprano who was so unattractive that she had to wear a mask during her 1840 appearance as Lucrezia Bori in Florence in order to avoid being booed off the stage (as she had been in Milan). Barbieri-Nini was nonetheless considered one of the finest dramatic sopranos of her day; Verdi chose her to create the leading soprano roles in I Due Foscari, Il Corsaro, and Macbeth. She married twice.
4. In Tosca, Cavaradossi is supposed to undergo a mock execution by firing squad, but due to Scarpia's skulduggery the execution is real.
5. In Il Trovatore, Azucena tells her "son," Manrico, how her mother was burned at the stake for allegedly having bewitched the infant son of the old Count di Luna. In revenge, Azucena threw the baby in the fire, but there was a slight hitch, as she mistakenly threw in her own baby instead of the di Luna child, and Manrico is actually the di Luna child whom she adopted -- but she doesn't tell him that.
6. Anna Bolena, a.k.a. Anne Boleyn, was beheaded by her very-recently-ex-husband, Henry VIII, both in real life and in Donizetti's opera.
7. In La Fanciulla del West, Dick Johnson (a.k.a. bandit José Ramerrez) is about to swing at the hands of a posse when Minnie saves him.
8. Messer Amantio di Nicolao is the pompous notary who takes down Buoso's will, as dictated by Gianni Schicchi in disguise.
9. American Douglas Moore wrote The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937), based on Stephen Vincent Bent's famous story.
10. In Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, Sir Joseph recounts how his law career led to his becoming First Lord of the Admiralty, even though his law partnership "was the only ship I ever had seen."
