11.   It seems that everyone wants to write an opera.

12.   It may seem surprising that Ned Rorem, with his affinity for vocal music, has not written more operas.

13.   More recently, he has written several operas.

14.   No child genius wrote this opera, but a jaded young man with uncanny insight into the foibles of romance.

15.   Nineteen-year-old Peter, determined to match the supposed fame of his father, is writing an opera about the cannibalism at Donner Pass.

16.   One night I was at a concert in the Shed, and a man came up to me and asked if I were interested in writing an opera.

17.   Or an Italian composer writing operas about a Japanese geisha, a Chinese princess, or a gun-toting, Bible-reading American barmaid?

18.   Richard Strauss wrote an opera about her.

19.   Since Brahms felt at home only in the Vienna of the opposition, he wrote no operas.

20.   The fact that the Santa Fe Opera awarded all three commissions to composers who had never written operas has provoked controversy, which does not faze Crosby at all.