Turandot, with a libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, is Giacomo Puccini’s final opera. It was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1924, and posthumously completed by Franco Alfano before premiering at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1926. There have subsequently been other completions of the score, most notably by Luciano Berio in 2001, but the Alfano version remains the most frequently performed, and is the one used in this instance.  Set in Peking in...

Ariodante HWV 33 is an opera seria in three acts by Georg Friedrich Haendel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which had itself been adapted from Canti 4, 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. It premiered at London’s Covent Garden Theatre on 8 January 1735, and received eleven performances during its initial run. It was revived by Handel for his 1736 season, but then went unperformed until it appeared in Stuttgart in 1926....

Last Days, by composer Oliver Leith and librettist Matt Copson, is based on Gus Van Sant’s eponymous film of 2005. In 1994 Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of rock band Nirvana, took his own life. Van Sant’s film is not strictly the story of Cobain’s demise, but, by focusing on a fictitious musician named Blake, it tries to imagine what he might have gone through in his final three days, which still remain something of a mystery. Van Sant initially thought that the film might...

Composed between 1923 and 1925, The Makropulos Case, with music and libretto by Leoš Janáček, is based on Karel Čapek’s eponymous play. Originally set in Prague in 1922, it concerns a hundred year old probate case entitled Gregor v. Prus. When Baron Joseph Ferdinand Prus died in 1827 his cousin claimed the estate, but so too did one Ferdinand Gregor, who asserted that the Baron had promised it to him. While the people originally involved are long dead, their...

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...