The standard operatic repertoire is full of examples of sexual and physical violence towards women. That is a fact that cannot be dismissed lightly on the grounds that most of the pieces were written a hundred or more years ago, since even today one in five women have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult. As a result, there is still something troubling about violent acts being sensationalised and used to create moments of high drama on stage, when in reality they leave behind real...

Gerald Barry has written six operas, including Alice’s Adventures Under Ground which comes to the Royal Opera House’s main stage next February. His first, however, The Intelligence Park of 1990, is currently appearing in the venue’s smaller Linbury Studio in a co-production with Music Theatre Wales. Set in Dublin in 1753, it sees a composer Paradies struggling to write an opera about the amorous entanglements of warrior Wattle and enchantress Daub, as his imagination...