Literaturoper (literature opera, plural Literaturopern) is opera with music composed for a pre-existing text, as opposed to an opera with a libretto written specifically for the work.
Although the term is German, the term can be used for any kind of opera, irrespective of style or language. (In that sense it can be regarded as a term rather than a genre as such.)
Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande after Maurice Maeterlinck, 1902
Richard Strauss:
Salome after Oscar Wilde, 1905
Elektra after Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1909
Alexander von Zemlinsky: Eine florentinische Tragödie after Oscar Wilde, 1917
Alban Berg:
Wozzeck after Georg Büchner's Woyzeck, 1925
Lulu after Frank Wedekind, 1937
Francis Poulenc: Les mamelles de Tirésias after Guillaume Apollinaire, 1941
Carl Orff: Antigonae after Friedrich Hölderlin, 1949
Benjamin Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream after William Shakespeare, 1960
Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Die Soldaten after Jakob Lenz, 1965
Gottfried von Einem: Der Besuch der alten Dame after Friedrich Dürrenmatt, 1971
Aribert Reimann: Lear after Shakespeare's King Lear, 1978
Frederick Delius: A Village Romeo and Juliet after Gottfried Keller's Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, 1907
Leoš Janáček:
Káťa Kabanová after Alexander Ostrovsky, 1921
From the House of the Dead (Z mrtvého domu) after Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1930
Dmitri Shostakovich:
The Nose (Nos) after Nikolai Gogol
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk after Nikolai Leskov's Ledy Macbeth Mtsenskovo uyezda, 1934
Benjamin Britten:
Billy Budd after Herman Melville, 1951
Death in Venice after Thomas Mann's Tod in Venedig, 1973
Hans Werner Henze:
The Bassarids after Euripides, 1966
Das verratene Meer, after Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, 1986–89
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