Just for fun, here are a couple of statistics.  They show the language and location of performance of the 100+ DVDs reviewed by this blog.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Italian is well in front but then of the Italian language operas eleven were written by an Austrian and seven others by other non-Italians.  It was a bit of a surprise that English featured so prominently.  Only two of the English language performances are ENO shows in translation.  When one thinks about it, it’s a bit remarkable that only six languages figure in total although I suppose there is some Chinese in Tan Dun’s The Last Emperor.

I was surprised by how geographically spread out the performances were.  I expected the Met to be much more prominent though my taste in directors probably biases the list away from the Met and towards Paris and Salzburg.  I really can’t account for the prominence of Glyndebourne though it may be partly Handel and Janáček related and partly a label preference towards Opus Arte.  The forty four assorted ones are a really mixed bag ranging from Perth to Los Angeles to Helsinki.