Useful lists are either complete lists or selective lists. This is a selective list.

This list is intended to reflect those composers who have made the greatest impact on the modern operatic repertory. Usually, but not always, this has been through sustained output of several major works. For this reason, many opera composers have been omitted, including composers who have works in the standard operatic repertory. For a complete list, see Category:Opera composers.

A biography of each composer can be found under each link.

• Vincenzo Bellini
• Alban Berg
• Hector Berlioz
• Georges Bizet
• Benjamin Britten
• Gustave Charpentier
• Claude Debussy
• Gaetano Donizetti
• Christoph Willibald Gluck
• Charles Gounod
• George Frideric Handel
• Franz Joseph Haydn
• Leos Janacek
• Ruggiero Leoncavallo
• Jean-Baptiste Lully
• Pietro Mascagni
• Jules Massenet
• Giacomo Meyerbeer
• Modest Mussorgsky
• Claudio Monteverdi
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Jacques Offenbach
• Francis Poulenc
• Giacomo Puccini
• Henry Purcell
• Jean-Philippe Rameau
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
• Gioacchino Rossini
• Camille Saint-Saens
• Richard Strauss
• Igor Stravinsky
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Giuseppe Verdi
• Richard Wagner
• Carl Maria von Weber
• Kurt Weill