Composed in 1751, Handel’s Jephtha is based on the story from Judges XI and George Buchanan’s 1554 play Jephthes, sive Votum. It sees the Israelite Jephtha triumph in battle over the Ammonites, but then face the most dreadful situation. This is because he had vowed that if he were victorious he would sacrifice the first living creature he saw on his return, and this turns out to be his daughter Iphis. To make the work acceptable to an eighteenth century audience,...

7 Deaths of Maria Callas is a multi-disciplinary affair as it combines opera, live and performance art and video projections. It is the brainchild of Marina Abramović, who is known as the mother of performance art, and is currently enjoying a retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts. Abramović has always felt an affinity with Maria Callas, and the suffering caused by disillusionment and dramatic love affairs that lies at the heart of many of her own works finds its...

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...

Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri of 1882 is the seventh of Gilbert and Sullivan’s fourteen collaborations. It was their first work to premiere at the Savoy Theatre (although Patience had transferred there in 1881) and ran for 398 performances, while also appearing extensively across the United Kingdom and America. It concerns a Fairy named Iolanthe who marries a mortal man. Although this is a capital offence under Fairy law, the Queen of the Fairies curtails her punishment to...

Composer George Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp have already had two major successes on the main stage of the Royal Opera House. Written on Skin, which appeared at Covent Garden in 2013 and 2017, may now be the most frequently performed opera written in the twenty-first century, and it was followed by Lessons in Love and Violence in 2018.  Benjamin and Crimp’s first collaboration, however, was a chamber opera entitled Into the Little Hill in 2006, and it is to this...

Set in eighteenth century Spain, Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino sees the Marquis of Calatrava oppose his daughter Leonora’s desired union with her 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...