Akhnaten at the Liceu, Hypnotic and Ritual

Philip Glass’s Akhnaten has at last reached the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in what was also its Spanish premiere. Composed in 1983 by the Baltimore-born composer, the opera centres on the figure of the pharaoh - husband of the celebrated and photogenic Nefertiti - who sought to establish monotheism in fourteenth-century BCE Egypt, only to fail in the face of fierce opposition from the priestly caste whose privileges his reforms threatened. Structured in three acts charting the...

Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera Albert Herring, Op. 39, with a libretto by Eric Crozier, is based on Guy de Maupassant’s 1887 novella Le Rosier de Madame Husson, albeit with the action transposed to an English setting. Set around 1900 in Loxford, which is a fictitious town but typical of those to be found in East Suffolk, it sees Lady Billows and the community’s elite attempt to organise the annual May Day festival. They need to elect a May Queen, but the housekeeper...

Based on Prosper Mérimée’s eponymous novella, Georges Bizet’s Carmen of 1875, with a libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, is the story of the ultimate temptress. A gypsy and cigarette factory worker in Seville, Carmen has the power to entice any man she chooses. Once they are besotted with her, however, she quickly moves on, leaving them heart broken and unable to accept what has happened.  In the opera Don José, an army...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final opera The Magic Flute, which premiered on 30 September 1791 just a few months before his death, takes the form of a Singspiel that combines singing with spoken dialogue. In it, the Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro, who she claims is evil. As Tamino goes about his quest, however, and falls in love with Pamina, he learns that things are the other way around. The Queen...

George Frideric Handel’s Giustino, HWV 37 has an Italian language libretto, the origins of which lie in one created by Nicolò Beregan in 1682. That was first set to music by Giovanni Legrenzi the following year, and was subsequently used by Tomaso Albinoni in 1711 (though his opera is now lost) and Antonio Vivaldi in 1724. The version that Handel used had been adapted from Beregan by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI’s court poet Pietro Pariati in 1711.  The opera...

Gioacchino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, performed here in English as Cinderella, is based on the traditional fairytale. While many versions of it exist, the one that is most widely known in the English speaking world was published in French as Cendrillon by Charles Perrault in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. Unlike Perrault’s version, however, Rossini’s steers clear of the more supernatural elements, and many have argued that this reflects the...