The Rape of Lucretia was the first example of the genre, and Britten followed it with Albert Herring, The Turn of the Screw and Curlew River. Other composers, including Hans Werner Henze, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, George Benjamin and Philip Glass, have since adopted the term for their own works.
The term chamber opera, while coined in the 20th century also is used to describe smaller Baroque operatic works such as Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Charpentier’s Les Arts florissants.