Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
‘M’appari’ is the best known name for the central aria from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha, a romantic comic opera in four acts. Flotow – who was born into a musical family, his mother playing the piano and his father the flute – composed some thirty operas during his lifetime, beginning his career after studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, before achieving his first big success with Alessandro Stradella, which premiered in Hamburg at the end of 1844. But his work has fallen into obscurity: Martha is sometimes described as the most performed opera of the second half of the nineteenth century, but today even it experiences only the occasional revival.
‘M’appari’ is the best known name for the central aria from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha, a romantic comic opera in four acts. Flotow – who was born into a musical family, his mother playing the piano and his father the flute – composed some thirty operas during his lifetime, beginning his career after studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, before achieving his first big success with Alessandro Stradella, which premiered in Hamburg at the end of 1844. But his work has fallen into obscurity: Martha is sometimes described as the most performed opera of the second half of the nineteenth century, but today even it experiences only the occasional revival.
