I, like JFrater, am a lover of opera and have performed in a few as well. Here is my list of the 10 best operas of all time. The items are picked through online voting and my own personal preferences, here ya go! [JFrater would like to publicly protest the exclusion of any 20th Century operas, but defers to the wisdom of the contributor.]
This one is on the list only because it is the first opera ever written! Though almost none of it survives today, I believe the first of anything should be on a list! (Many historians, and JFrater, believe Hildegard von Bingen’s 12th century “Ordo virtutum” is the first opera, but it is not known if it was ever staged, Daphne was). The clip above is not from Daphne, but Peri’s music is very hard to find, so this is a clip of a counter-tenor singing an excerpt from Invocazione di Orfeo.



