Most (classical) composers had one or a few lyricists with whom they preferred to work:

  • Bach: Picander
  • Mozart: Da Ponte
  • Sullivan: Gilbert
  • Verdi: Piave, Boito
  • Isaac Albéniz: Francis Burdett Money-Coutts
  • Richard Strauss: Hugo von Hofmannsthal
  • Puccini: Illica and Giacosa
  • Satie: Contamine, Plato (when composing Socrate: Platon s'avère comme un collaborateur parfait, très doux, jamais importun - "Plato shows himself a perfect coworker, very soft, never out of line")
  • Amadeo Vives: Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw
  • Rodgers: Hammerstein
  • Gershwin: Ira Gershwin
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber: Tim Rice, followed by Don Black
  • Bertold Hummel: Hermann Hesse
  • Handel: Haym, Jennens
  • Bellini: Romani
  • Gluck: Calzabigi
  • Galuppi: Goldoni
  • Haydn: Swieten
  • Mendelssohn: Schubring
  • Hasse: Metastasio

Composers that preferred to write their own libretti

  • Richard Wagner
  • Arrigo Boito
  • Modest Mussorgsky
  • Leoš Janáček
  • Olivier Messiaen
  • Cole Porter
  • Gian Carlo Menotti
  • Irving Berlin
  • Stephen Sondheim
  • Michael Tippett