Based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto was a triumph when it premiered at La Fenice in Venice in 1851, and has remained one of the composer’s most frequently performed operas ever since. Its popularity is thoroughly deserved but might still be deemed interesting, given that it is a contender for the cruellest opera in the mainstream repertoire. While many works see the innocent suffer and die, there is usually a sense in...

The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaurmarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to...

Handel’s Susanna of 1749 takes its story from Chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel. Set during the Babylonian captivity, it sees Susanna’s husband Joacim have to leave her for a period. Two Elders of the community who are besotted with her use his absence as an opportunity to try to force themselves upon her while she is bathing. When, however, she resists their advances, in revenge they invent a story that they caught her in an adulterous act and she is consequently...

Set in Japan, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly of 1904 explores the relationship between the American naval officer Pinkerton and the Nagasaki born Cio-Cio-San, who he both affectionately and patronisingly calls Madam Butterfly. She takes their marriage extremely seriously, even converting to Christianity the day before their wedding and consequently being ostracised by her family. He, on the other hand, sees his union as being akin to his Japanese house,...

Luisa Miller is not one of Verdi’s total rarities, but it does not grace major opera houses with anywhere near the same frequency as his most popular creations. The work, however, has much merit as, for example, Act II ends with an allegro in three mounting stages that, although quickening towards an animated finish, is not like a conventional stretta. Written in 1849, it is regarded as coming at the beginning of the composer’s ‘middle period’, with...

Gerald Barry has written six operas, with his first The Intelligence Park of 1990 appearing in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio last autumn. Now, his Alice’s Adventures Under Ground of 2016 comes to Covent Garden’s larger venue for its first ever staged performances. The opera only lasts an hour meaning there are two performances on most of the days it is appearing, with Cast A taking on one of them and Cast B the other. Barry has opted for the original title of...