Although Georg Philipp Telemann is acclaimed as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and one of the most prolific ever in terms of volume of output, his operas have been somewhat neglected. This performance of Pimpinone, or, to give it its full title, Die Ungleiche Heirat zwischen Vespetta und Pimpinone oder Das herrsch-süchtige Camer Mägden (The Unequal Marriage Between Vespetta and Pimpinone or The Domineering Chambermaid), represents the first time that Covent Garden...

Written in 1975 and first performed by Dame Janet Baker at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1976, Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra was his final vocal work. He assembled the libretto from parts of a translation by Robert Lowell of Jean Racine’s 1677 play Phèdre, and the cantata sees the eponymous woman contemplate her death as things have completely fallen apart with her husband Theseus. This is due to her lust for his son and her stepson Hippolytus, who has died as an indirect...

Leonard Bernstein composed his one act opera Trouble in Tahiti in 1952, and on this occasion wrote the libretto himself. It concerns a married couple who on the surface have it made with their beautiful suburban home, but who find it difficult to live with each other and constantly bicker and fight. In 1983 he wrote A Quiet Place, which considers where the same family’s members are thirty years later. While performing both in the same evening would seem an obvious thing to...

Antonio Vivaldi’s L'Olimpiade uses an Italian libretto by Pietro Metastasio that was originally written for Antonio Caldara’s eponymous 1733 opera. Vivaldi’s own version premiered at Venice’s Teatro Sant’Angelo on 17 February 1734, while the libretto would go on to be set to music by over fifty composers including Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in 1735. The action takes place in ancient times in Sicyon during an Olympic Games. Megacle plans to enter...

This Royal Opera double bill, performed by Jette Parker Artists, presents two one-act operas that were written at broadly opposite ends of the twentieth century, but received their premieres just eight years apart. Bohuslav Martinů composed Larmes de couteau, to a French libretto by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, in 1928, but it did not receive its premiere until 1969 at the State Theatre, Brno. The music demonstrates the composer’s then preoccupation with jazz, while the story...

Giant, with music by Sarah Angliss and libretto by Ross Sutherland, was commissioned by Britten Pears Arts and first appeared at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2023. It explores the relationship between the eighteenth century British surgeon John Hunter and Charles Byrne who, measuring seven feet, seven inches (judged by his skeletal remains) was known as ‘The Irish Giant’. Following Byrne’s death in 1783, Hunter arranged for his body to be stolen while it was on its way to...