Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, describes the establishing and subsequent implosion of a city that is designed to give people fun because, it is asserted, there is nothing else in the world on which to rely. Situated somewhere in America, it is initially founded by three fugitives (Leokadja Begbick, Fatty the Bookkeeper and Trinity Moses) who find themselves unable to flee any further from the pursuing...

Blue, written by Tony Award winning composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson, sees a tragedy occur against the backdrop of a clash between a father and son and the way in which black people are treated in society at large. Set in Harlem in 2007 it sees a black Mother and Father have a Son, all of whom are only ever referred to by those names. As soon as The Mother even tells her friends she is pregnant, they tell her there is no future for black boys because of the...