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Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to celebrate its 100th anniversary, John Corigliano’s The Ghost of Versailles received its premiere at the Met in 1991, twelve years after it had been commissioned and eight years past the centennial season for which it had first been envisioned. Nonetheless, it was an instant success. Because of the unique situation, a large cast and extravagant orchestral forces were made available, but aside from that specific context, both John Corigliano and librettist William Hoffman conceived of Ghosts as a work of music theater that celebrates and even takes as one of its principal themes the artistic power of opera: it puts into use lavish operatic resources precisely to introduce a contemporary audience to grand opera.