Sometimes you get up in the middle of the night realizing that what is done can never be undone. For Lady Macbeth, no amount of handwringing (or hand-washing) can clear her conscience.

When the American composer Carlisle Floyd wrote his opera Susannah back in the 1950s, he had no way of knowing how the Biblical themes of shame, blame and lust would resonate today.

You hear the message over and over in pop culture: love overcomes everything. But when Don José sings “The Flower Song” in Bizet's Carmen, you're reminded that love has a dark side, too.

A picture may paint a thousand words, but nothing compares to the intimacy and immediacy of a handwritten letter. Hearing the "Letter Aria" from Jules Massenet's Werther will prove it.

When the Voyager spacecraft set off to explore the galaxy, it carried a recording to represent the best of humanity. There was only one aria: the rage-fest from Mozart's The Magic Flute.

You’ve probably been there: in love for the first time and enchanted by the very sound of your sweetheart’s name. The problem for Gilda is that her new love isn’t who he says he is.

She seduces, she traps, she destroys. She's a femme fatale and her signature aria is the dangerously alluring “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns.

When things go from bad to worse for Tosca, Puccini’s tragic heroine, she turns inward and prays. “I lived for art,” she tells God, “I lived for love.” What did I do to deserve all this?

More than half of all Americans say they’ve experienced love at first sight. Can this explain the timeless appeal of Puccini’s La Bohème?