Vivaldi's dazzling 1727 drama about true love and lost marbles is based on a 16th-century bestseller by Ludovico Ariosto, an epic that inspired nearly three centuries worth of operas.

There are vampires galore at the movies and on television but the undead are rarely seen at the opera, making Heinrich Marschner's richly scored and truly spooky drama The Vampire a genuine, operatic rarity.

The plot is more than a little silly — not to mention politically incorrect in the extreme — but wackiness was never done better, or more beautifully, than Rossini did it in The Italian Girl in Algiers, heard in a Washington National Opera production filled with world-class, Rossini singers.

With its sensational story, graphic violence and overt sensuality, Bizet's Carmen proves that opera goers are drawn to the same elements that make for pop culture hits at the movies, and on television.