🎭 Opera After Dark: 5 Operas Made for Halloween

London is already glowing orange. Pumpkins grin from windowsills, the air is cold enough for capes, and our inboxes are haunted by invitations to candlelit concerts in mysterious churches. While Halloween is usually a time for horror films and ghost walks, we at DEBUT think there’s a far more decadent way to indulge your dark side - through opera.

Opera has always been the art form of the supernatural: ghosts, witches, demons, and fates worse than death are its favourite plot devices. So, pour a glass of red, light a candle, and take a tour of the five operas that make the perfect playlist for your most gothic autumn night.

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1. Mozart’s Don Giovanni

💀 “Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m’invitasti!”

When Mozart wrote this “dramma giocoso” - part comedy, part hellfire - he basically invented the musical ghost story.
Don Giovanni, the swaggering nobleman, murders a man and laughs in the face of morality… until that man’s statue knocks on his door. The final scene, where stone turns to flesh and Hell claims its due, is pure Halloween theatre!

Why it chills: The Commendatore’s bass voice, booming over Mozart’s volcanic harmonies, is still one of the most terrifying things ever sung.

2. Britten’s The Turn of the Screw

👻 Psychological horror in chamber form

Benjamin Britten’s ghost opera is not about jump scares - it’s about what happens when you can’t tell if the ghosts are real. Based on Henry James’ novella, it traps a young governess in an English manor with two disturbingly angelic children and two disturbingly dead servants.

Why it chills: The music spirals like a haunted music box; the sense of dread is almost unbearable. By the end, you’re not sure if you’ve seen a ghost or just gone mad.

3. Verdi’s Macbeth

🩸 Blood, witches, ambition

Before there was Breaking Bad, there was Macbeth. Verdi’s version is drenched in prophecy, murder, and guilt. The witches cackle, Lady Macbeth sleepwalks through her crimes, and the score bristles with supernatural power.

Why it chills: Verdi’s witches aren’t cute cauldrons-and-cats characters - they’re forces of chaos, shrieking over trombones and thunder.

4. Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle

🔑 Seven doors. Seven secrets. One terrifying truth.

This one-act opera is basically an art-house horror film before cinema existed. Judith insists on unlocking her husband’s forbidden doors, each one revealing a deeper and darker secret. The final door? Let’s just say… it doesn’t end well for her.

Why it chills: The orchestra is the castle - rumbling, creaking, glowing in blood-red brass. You’ll never look at a locked door the same way again.

5. Menotti’s The Medium

🔮 When a fake séance becomes all too real

Madame Flora makes her living as a con artist - until one night, during her “act”, she feels a ghostly hand touch her. What follows is one of opera’s most psychological and spine-tingling breakdowns.

Why it chills: The entire score feels suspended between this world and the next - haunting, human, and heartbreakingly claustrophobic.

Bonus listens for your Halloween playlist

• Gounod’s Faust – Make a deal with the devil, what could go wrong?

• Weber’s Der Freischütz – Germanic folklore meets dark magic and bullets from Hell.

• Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor – A bridal veil, a bloody dagger, and a ghostly prelude.

• Dvořák’s Rusalka – The other mermaid story, the one that ends in tears.

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