History reminds us that even the greatest masterpieces don’t always enjoy a warm welcome.
Some of the most revered works in the classical canon were met with confusion, outrage—or outright disaster—at their premieres. Take Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which sparked a near-riot at its 1913 debut in Paris, as the raw rhythms and provocative choreography clashed violently with audience expectations.
Or consider Rachmaninov’s First Symphony, whose catastrophic first performance was sabotaged by an allegedly drunk conductor, plunging the composer into a deep depression. These moments, once seen as failures, now shine with historical irony: misunderstood in their time, these works helped reshape the future of music.
In this list, we explore 15 extraordinary compositions that began their lives under clouds of disaster, only to emerge as towering achievements—testaments to the enduring, sometimes volatile, power of artistic innovation.
Fifteen first-night flops
1. Bizet Carmen
Paris’s Opéra-Comique, which commissioned Carmen, specialised in staging lightly moralistic works. But what they got from Bizet was an opera about promiscuous cigarette girls who liked a fight. Audiences were outraged and the opera was a disaster. The French composer died believing he’d written a dud. Tchaikovsky predicted it would one day be the most popular opera in the world, but then he knew a thing or two about flops…
2. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1
If you count a premiere as also being the first play-through of a work, then few can have gone as badly as Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.
The ink was still wet when the composer showed the score to Nikolai Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky was hoping the pianist would give the first performance, so he rattled through the first movement to demonstrate it. At the end, the silence was deafening, as Tchaikovsky recollected: ‘Not a single word! Rubinstein was amassing his storm.’ Indeed he was. He declared the concerto ‘worthless and unplayable’.
3. Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1
Johannes Brahms had long wanted to compose a symphony but decided to keep his powder dry and write a quasi-symphonic piano concerto instead. It was a big deal for the young composer, who laboured over the score of his First Piano Concerto.
To ensure no slips, he decided to perform it at the premiere in Hanover. The new work had a cool reception so he tried again a few days later in Leipzig but, as he recalled later, ‘Three pairs of hands attempted to applaud but were quickly stopped by unmistakable hissing all around.’ They clearly weren't hearing what we can hear, which is one of the greatest and most powerful piano concertos of all time.
- Best of Brahms: 15 extraordinary works by the great German Romantic
- Six of the best: Brahms recordings
4. Rachmaninov Symphony No. 1
The young Russian composer Sergey Rachmaninov threw his heart and soul into his First Symphony. But the premiere was conducted by a man whose very surname suggested one glass might never have been enough.
Alexander Glazunov was drunk as he mounted the podium. His arms rose and fell with the music but there was no feeling. Composer César Cui, who was in the audience, said Rachmaninov’s symphony ‘would have brought ecstasy to the inhabitants of hell’. Rachmaninov, meanwhile, hid in a stairwell with his hands over his ears.
5. Beethoven Fidelio
Where most composers were happy to make music a politics-free zone, Beethoven banged on about freedom and justice, never mind who was listening. Take Fidelio, his only opera. It’s a story about one woman’s love triumphing over political brutality. So where did Beethoven have its premiere?
In a city (Vienna) that was under military occupation, that's where. And who was the audience? The people doing the occupying (French military officers). Add to that the German libretto and, needless to say, it didn’t go down a storm.
6. Rossini The Barber of Seville
Scrabbling around for his next opera plot in 1815, the ever-industrious Italian opera composer Gioachino Rossini alighted on the first of a trilogy of plays concerning Figaro, a barber. ‘Great,’ he thought; ‘I’ll call my new opera The Barber of Seville.’ But fellow Italian Giovanni Paisiello had already written an opera based on the same play – and given it the same title.
When the premiere of Rossini’s version came around, Paisiello planted his supporters among the audience. At a pre-arranged moment they began booing and chanting Paisiello’s name. A great idea, except that they couldn’t afford to be there every night. The next performance was a rip-roaring success.
7. Elgar The Dream of Gerontius
Inspired by his interest in the new and complex music of Wagner, Elgar's luminous, spiritual oratorio The Dream of Gerontius was technically and musically beyond the Birmingham Festival Choir. It didn’t help that its chorus master died suddenly during rehearsals and that his replacement wasn’t up to the job, or that the conductor, Hans Richter, was ill-prepared. The premiere was, duly, a disaster.
Nor were Elgar’s problems over. The work’s Catholic sentiments offended the Protestant church, whose leaders demanded changes to the text before it could be performed in their cathedrals.
More first-night flops (one composer comes up again...)
8. Mussorgsky A Night on Bare Mountain
As one of the first tone poems ever written by a Russian composer, this was an important milestone for Russian music. So, Mussorgsky had devoted 14 frantic days to Night on Bare Mountain.
The composer presented the completed work to his friend and fellow 'Mighty Handful' composer Mily Balakirev, the man he had chosen to wield the baton at its premiere. Unfortunately Balakirev was less than impressed, citing grave shortcomings in the score, and refused to go near it.
9. Johann Strauss II The Blue Danube
No other piece of music better illustrates the ‘flop to hit’ reversal than Johann Strauss II’s By the Beautiful Blue Danube. Here’s a waltz that literally everybody knows, but the audience at its premiere did not entirely go with the flow.
The work was intended to boost Viennese morale after Austria’s defeat at the hands of Prussia in the Seven Weeks’ War. And so it might have, had ‘humorous’ lyrics intended to make light of Austria’s problems not then been added. The first-night crowd hated them and the piece received just one encore making it, in Strauss’s terms, a disaster.
10. Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
As with The Blue Danube, The Rite of Spring’s legendary first-night upset may not have been entirely of the music’s making. According to its composer Igor Stravinsky ‘the storm broke’ only when the stage curtain opened to reveal the ‘group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down’.
He was referring to the dancers of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, and by ‘storm’, he meant catcalls, whistling and fistfights. The conductor, Pierre Monteux, recalled that, ‘Everything available was tossed in our direction’. Diaghilev’s verdict on the night: ‘Exactly what I wanted.’
- Ranked: the Stravinsky ballets you need to hear
- Pierre Monteux features in our list of the 30 greatest conductors of all time
11. Verdi La traviata
The premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata on March 6, 1853, at La Fenice in Venice, was a notable failure—largely due to casting and staging issues that clashed with audience expectations.
The lead soprano, Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, was considered too mature and physically unconvincing as the young, consumptive courtesan Violetta. Her appearance reportedly drew laughter and disbelief from the audience, particularly during her death scene. Additionally, Verdi had wanted the opera to be set in a contemporary, realistic setting, but theatre authorities insisted on 18th-century costumes and sets, further distancing the drama from its intended emotional immediacy.
Verdi himself called the performance a 'fiasco', though he placed much of the blame on the circumstances rather than the music. Just a year later, a revised production in Venice with a more suitable cast proved successful, and La traviata has since become one of the most beloved and frequently performed operas in the repertoire.
12. Tchaikovsky Swan Lake
Another entry for poor old Tchaikovsky. At its debut, Swan Lake waddled onto stage with all the grace of the proverbial ugly duckling. As with the Rite of Spring 40 years later, the music was ahead of its time and the dancers unused to such an inventive score.
Word leaked out ahead of the premiere that they were struggling and so easier pieces were slipped in. Perhaps the press smelled a rat, because they were unimpressed. By the time the ballet dropped out of the repertoire, one third of Tchaikovsky’s score had been replaced.
13. Bellini Norma
At least the La traviata audience told Verdi what they thought of it. In contrast, the audience at the premiere of Bellini’s Norma (on Boxing Day 1831 at Milan's La Scala) did and said the worst thing possible – nothing. Not a boo or a clap.
‘Fiasco! Fiasco! Solemn fiasco!’ wailed Bellini. The reaction was unexpected, as Bellini was already a celebrated composer, and the opera starred Giuditta Pasta, one of the greatest sopranos of the era. However, the audience responded with indifference and confusion, perhaps due to the opera’s complex vocal demands, especially the intricate and emotionally nuanced role of Norma. Some reports suggest the cast, including Pasta, may have been underprepared, leading to an underwhelming performance.
A distraught Bellini cast around for explanations: the singers were tired, some sections of the opera didn’t work… he even noted the presence in the audience of a rival camp out to make trouble. However, within a few performances, audiences began to appreciate its musical richness and dramatic depth. Norma eventually became a cornerstone of 19th-century opera, with the aria 'Casta diva' becoming one of the most iconic in the soprano repertoire - a favourite of the great Maria Callas among others.
14. Bernstein Candide
As with Strauss’s Blue Danube, words were nearly the undoing of Candide. The libretto was penned by dramatist Lillian Hellman, whose idea the operetta was in the first place, but at the premiere some critics found her efforts too serious and the Broadway production was a flop, running for just two months. Subsequent producers, however, could see its potential, and one by one set about rescuing it, with Bernstein himself rolling up his sleeves and setting to.
15. Wagner Tannhaüser
When members of a dining club start jeering at your new opera because you’ve disrupted their schedule, you know you’ve got a problem. This is what the Jockey-Club de Paris did during the first Act of Wagner’s Tannhaüser at its premiere.
Napoleon III had pointed out that the Paris Opéra liked to feature a ballet within its productions. Since Wagner hadn’t written one, he set about doing so, but for dramatic reasons placed in it Act I rather than Act II, as was the custom. This meant the bons viveurs of the Jockey-Club had to postpone their meal to be present at the start of the opera, rather than slipping in for the ballet later on.
- The best recordings of Wagner
- Greed, lust and corruption: why Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle is still the greatest show on earth
Pics: Getty Images