Based on the fairytales of Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka of 1901, with a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil, tells the story of the eponymous water sprite. She tells her father Vodník, the water goblin who rules the lake where she lives, that she has fallen in love with a Prince who she has seen hunting. Wishing to become human so that she can embrace him, she seeks the assistance of the witch Ježibaba who explains that...

Boris Godunov is Modest Mussorgsky’s only completed opera, and is considered to be his masterpiece. Its subjects are the eponymous Russian ruler, who reigned as Tsar from 1598 to 1605, and the False Dmitry I, who succeeded him almost immediately but was killed only a year later. The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on Pushkin’s blank verse drama Boris Godunov as well as Nikolay Karamzin’s History of the Russian...

While most composers’ settings of the Catholic Church’s Requiem Mass were written to honour departed individuals, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is rather different. It was commissioned to be performed at the consecration of the newly built Coventry Cathedral in 1962, the old structure having been bombed during the Second World War. It was therefore designed to commemorate all lives lost in war, and, although circumstances prevented this from happening, it was planned for...