Bad to the bone: Who’s the worst of the worst in opera?

Performing arts
By Nicholas Kenyon
June 29, 2026
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Nobody does baddies quite like opera. Many of the greatest works in the repertoire feature (mostly male) figures characterised by astonishing venality, cruelty and often downright evil (we’re looking at you, Scarpia).

So who are the greatest of all evil-doers in the canon? Join us as we raise the curtain on our countdown of the figures we love to hate.

10. Alberich, Wagner’s Ring cycle

There are many shades of villainy in Wagner’s great sequence of operas, but the most malign force in the cycle is Alberich, chief of the Nibelungen race of dwarves. In Wagner’s story he renounces love and steals the Rheingold in order to forge the ring. So he can be blamed for everything that follows, which a lot; yet he is wily, too. Along with the Rhinemaidens, he is the only character who survives to the end of the cycle.

9. Herod, Richard Strauss’s Salome

Herod is an ambivalent character in a deeply decadent opera. The Biblical ruler depicted here is not the king associated with the slaughter of the innocents, but Herod Antipas, the tetrarch who appears in the New Testament account of John the Baptist’s death. Lasciviously interested in his stepdaughter, the young Salome, he agrees to her demand for Jokanaan’s (John the Baptist’s) execution after her dance. When confronted with Salome’s obsession with the severed head, Herod finally orders her death, too. He is undoubtedly corrupt and morally weak, yet Strauss gives him an anxious sensuality that allows Salome to manipulate him. Is she a villain, too?

8. Claggart, Britten’s Billy Budd

Claggart is a villain who gets both his just deserts and exactly what he wanted – a perfect example of how Britten teased out the ambiguities of Herman Melville’s story. In the hothouse atmosphere of the all-male ship HMS Indomitable, the evil master-at-arms Claggart despises the new innocent recruit, Billy Budd, and is determined to destroy him. He accuses Budd of inciting mutiny, but Budd strikes out and kills him. Captain Vere has to adjudicate and Budd is convicted of his death and hanged, thus achieving Claggart’s aim. Vere is left with an inheritance that haunts him.

7. Lady Macbeth, Verdi’s Macbeth

As in Shakespeare’s play, which Verdi venerated, Lady Macbeth is the villain who urges her husband, Macbeth, to murder the king, and then pays the price by descending into madness. Musically, her forcefulness in persuading him to murder King Duncan is matched by the terror of her later sleepwalking scene. This is one of Verdi’s greatest and most innovative moments, conjuring the dislocation of Lady Macbeth’s mind in music. It’s revealing how this shifts the emphasis of villainy onto Lady Macbeth, despite it being Macbeth who kills Duncan.

6. Iago, Verdi’s Otello

A more subtle villain than most, Iago keeps his evil under wraps and pretends to be Otello’s faithful associate, only to undermine his relationship with Desdemona and inflame Otello’s jealousy, which leads to a fatal conclusion when Otello kills her. Iago’s declaration of infamy (“I believe in a cruel God”) is dramatic, but the end of the opera allows him to make his escape from the scene (unlike in Shakespeare, where he is sentenced to imprisonment).

5. Queen of the Night, Mozart’s The Magic Flute

In the convoluted plot of Mozart’s last opera, the Queen of the Night is a portentous figure who tries to force her daughter Pamina to murder the leader of the priests, Sarastro. However, she has two brilliant, dangerously attractive coloratura arias (O zittre nicht, mein lieber and Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen), which invariably bring the house down before she is swept away to the darkness and the sun triumphs in harmony.

4. Bluebeard, Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

This is one of the most chilling, sustained portraits of evil in all opera, but we end up with the feeling that Bluebeard is more than a villain: he is a sick, obsessive collector of women, whose sense of possession is total. We see his riches, his jewellery, his estates and his former wives – whom his new spouse, Judith, must now join. All set to electrifying music.

3. Pinkerton, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

Arguably less a deliberate villain and more a total bastard, Pinkerton is an American naval officer who exploits the young Butterfly in Japan, and leaves her with a child while he goes back home to marry. He imagines he can return with his wife and all will be well if they adopt the child – but the effect on Butterfly is catastrophic. Her music is always sympathetic, whereas Pinkerton’s is unconvincingly American and he emerges musically as well as morally unattractive.

2. Scarpia, Puccini’s Tosca

Scarpia represents that toxic if familiar mixture of a lust for power and a lust for women. He lords it over Rome with an iron hand, while his henchmen torture and murder without restraint. But Scarpia’s intention is always to seduce the singer Floria Tosca, and the scene where she bargains for a safe passage for her and her lover Cavaradossi is among the most compelling in any opera. Scarpia does not come out of it alive.

1. Don Giovanni, Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is undoubtedly a psychopath: a man of no moral compass who is violent, exploitative and predatory towards women. The opera shows him killing the Commendatore after attempting to seduce his daughter, Anna. Then there is Zerlina, seduced on her wedding day, and the obsessive Elvira. Giovanni is a total villain of the MeToo age – and yet the composer makes him alluring, and his music compelling. Indeed, we may even feel a twist of sympathy as Giovanni is dragged to hell for his sins. Is the allure of every villain in opera that we see a little of ourselves reflected?