Based on Prosper Mérimée’s eponymous novella, Georges Bizet’s Carmen of 1875, with a libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, is the story of the ultimate temptress. A gypsy and cigarette factory worker in Seville, Carmen has the power to entice any man she chooses. Once, however, they are besotted with her she quickly moves on, leaving them heart broken and unable to accept what has happened. In the opera Don José, an army corporal,...

Turandot, with a libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, is Giacomo Puccini’s final opera. It was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1924, and posthumously completed by Franco Alfano before premiering at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1926. There have subsequently been other completions of the score, most notably by Luciano Berio in 2001, but the Alfano version remains the most frequently performed, and is the one used in this instance.  Set in Peking in...

Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore of 1853, with a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano and Leone Emanuele Bardare, is based on Antonio García Gutiérrez’s Spanish play El trovador of 1836. Set in fifteenth century Spain it tells of the noble lady Leonora who is in love with the troubadour Manrico, but is herself loved by the Count di Luna, a nobleman in the service of the Prince of Aragon. The Count’s younger brother Garzia supposedly died in infancy when a...

Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film Festen (The Celebration) is a black comedy in which the emphasis should arguably be on the word ‘black’ rather than ‘comedy’. Now, Mark-Anthony Turnage has adapted it into an opera, varying the original story in places. Set in 1989 in a hotel in the Danish countryside, run by Helge and Else Klingefeldt, it sees a gathering to celebrate Helge’s sixtieth birthday. Many friends and family members are in attendance...

Written in 1975 and first performed by Dame Janet Baker at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1976, Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra was his final vocal work. He assembled the libretto from parts of a translation by Robert Lowell of Jean Racine’s 1677 play Phèdre, and the cantata sees the eponymous woman contemplate her death as things have completely fallen apart with her husband Theseus. This is due to her lust for his son and her stepson Hippolytus, who has died as an indirect...

Set in Ancient Egypt, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida of 1871, with a libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, centres on a love triangle between Radamès, Amneris and Aida. As a Princess of Egypt and the daughter of the King, Amneris believes that her feelings for the Chief of the Guard Radamès ought to be reciprocated, and is horrified when she discovers that he and Aida, an Ethiopian slave, are actually in love. When Aida’s father Amonasro is captured in battle, with the...