Last Days, by composer Oliver Leith and librettist Matt Copson, is based on Gus Van Sant’s eponymous film of 2005. In 1994 Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of rock band Nirvana, took his own life. Van Sant’s film is not strictly the story of Cobain’s demise, but, by focusing on a fictitious musician named Blake, it tries to imagine what he might have gone through in his final three days, which still remain something of a mystery. Van Sant initially thought that the film might...

This Royal Opera double bill, performed by Jette Parker Artists, presents two one-act operas that were written at broadly opposite ends of the twentieth century, but received their premieres just eight years apart. Bohuslav Martinů composed Larmes de couteau, to a French libretto by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, in 1928, but it did not receive its premiere until 1969 at the State Theatre, Brno. The music demonstrates the composer’s then preoccupation with jazz, while the story...