Originally set in Naples, Mozart’s Così fan tutte of 1790 sees the philosopher Don Alfonso challenge two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, to prove that their respective fiancées, the sisters Dorabella and Fiordiligi, are faithful. He is certain that no woman ever is, but the younger men are so convinced of their own lovers’ fidelity that they agree to a wager with him. They will pretend to be called away to war and then return disguised as Albanians to try...

Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow (or Die lustige Witwe) is an operetta that was immensely popular on its premiere in 1905, and has continued to cause much amusement in opera houses ever since. Based on Henri Meilhac’s play L'attaché d'ambassadeof 1861, it tells of one Hanna Glawari who is a merry widow because, when her husband died, he left her a fortune of twenty million francs. She comes from the small Balkan principality of Pontevedro whose economy is...

Philip Glass, who is recognised as one of the leading proponents of minimalism in the world today, has written over twenty-five operas, a total achieved by hardly any composer since the days of Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. Three of these form the ‘portrait trilogy’, which focuses on pivotal figures in the fields of science, politics and religion respectively. Einstein on the Beach premiered in 1976, Satyagraha (about Mahatma Gandhi) followed in 1980, and then the triptych was...

Katya Kabanova is often regarded as Leoš Janáček’s first ‘mature’ opera, despite the fact that he was 67 when it premiered in 1921. The libretto is by Vincenc Červinka, while the work is based on Alexander Ostrovsky’s play The Storm, but there can still be little doubt that the opera, and particularly its lead character, were inspired by the composer’s feelings for the far younger Kamila Stösslová. Set in the Russian town of...

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski, is currently in the midst of presenting Richard Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen over a three-year period. The first opera Das Rheingold was performed in January 2018, with the second Die Walküre appearing now. While in the initial instalment, the chief god Wotan manages to retain his status and magnificent castle Valhalla, albeit at a terrible price, in this one things unravel at an alarming rate...

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata of 1853 is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today. Based on Alexandre Dumas, fils’s play La Dame aux camélias, it tells of Violetta Valéry who is a famed Parisian courtesan. Beneath her apparently carefree exterior, however, she is suffering from tuberculosis and her world is shaken when she meets Alfredo with whom she falls in love. They run away together and live off the sale of her goods, but one day...