List of operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

[1] From a very young age, Mozart had, according to opera analyst David Cairns, "an extraordinary capacity ... for seizing on and assimilating whatever in a newly encountered style (was) most useful to him".

[2] In a letter to his father, dated 7 February 1778, Mozart wrote, "As you know, I can more or less adopt or imitate any kind and style of composition".

[6] Music writer and analyst Gottfried Kraus has remarked that all these women were present, as prototypes, in the earlier operas; Bastienne (1768), and Sandrina (La finta giardiniera, 1774) are precedents for the later Constanze and Pamina, while Sandrina's foil Serpetta is the forerunner of Blonde, Susanna, Zerlina and Despina.

[10] The once widely held theory that Da Ponte was the librettist for the discarded Lo sposo deluso of 1783/84 has now been generally rejected.

Some sources have adopted more specific criteria, leading them to exclude the early "Sacred Singspiel" Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots,[e] which they classify as an oratorio.

[f] However, as Osborne makes clear, the libretto contains stage directions which suggest that the work was acted, not merely sung, and it is formally described as a "geistliches Singspiel" (sacred play with music), not as an oratorio.