Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra, with libretto by Christian Lehnert, was written in 2007, five years before the composer’s death and four years after he actually announced he was never going to write another opera. The first half relates the story of how Phaedra’s love for her stepson Hippolyt triggers catastrophe, as told by many writers across the ages including Euripides, Jean Racine and Sarah Kane. The second half, in contrast, follows a mythological tradition alluded to...

Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in 1951 before undergoing revisions in 1960, is based on the eponymous novella by Herman Melville, and has a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier. With the main action set aboard the HMS Indomitable in 1797 during the French Revolutionary Wars, the story centres on Billy Budd who at the start is pressed into serving in the Royal Navy from a merchant ship. He has a lot of positive attributes including...

Charles-François Gounod’s Faust premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859. It underwent several revisions over the following decade, including the insertion of a ballet into Act V to meet the expectations of grand opera, and was extremely popular in the nineteenth century. It was the work with which New York’s Metropolitan Opera opened for the first time on 22 October 1883, while Covent Garden included it in its...

Handel’s Berenice was written at a time when the composer desperately needed a success. By 1737 he had been competing for audiences with the rival Opera of the Nobility for four years, but unfortunately things did not play out as he had hoped. Pressures, including the work involved to complete the piece, led him to have a stroke, and the opera, conducted by John Christopher Smith as the composer’s right hand was temporarily paralysed, lasted a mere four performances. Although...

Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel is a new opera by composer Iain Bell and librettist Fiona Jenkins, and represents a co-commission between English National Opera and Opera North. Though the figure of the killer has enjoyed much attention as his identity, motive and mindset have been speculated on throughout the ages, the women he dispatched and mutilated have been more or less forgotten. This opera intends to redress the balance by considering the poverty they experienced that put...

Set in eighteenth century Spain, Verdi’s La forza del destino sees the Marquis of Calatrava oppose his daughter Leonora’s South American lover Don Alvaro, believing he is not good enough for her. When, however, Don Alvaro surrenders himself to prove that he never violated her, he throws down his pistol and accidentally kills the Marquis when it goes off. Leonora’s brother Don Carlo sets out to avenge his father’s death but he and Don Alvaro end up fighting side by...