Painters and opera go together. Connected by passion and big gestures, it is not surprising that composers are drawn to painters as subjects. There’s Puccini’s fictional Marcello in La bohème and Cavaradossi in Tosca. Whole operas have been devoted to real visual artists: Hector Berlioz in Benvenuto Cellini, about the Renaissance sculptor and Paul Hindemth’s Mathis der Mahler, the Reformation painter.