Erich Korngold, who is more usually if somewhat unfairly associated with film scores, wrote Die tote Stadt at the age of 23. It is based on Georges Rodebach’s 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte, which had already been turned into a play by the author. Korngold’s father Julius knew Siegfried Trebitsch, who had translated the latter into German, and Julius and Erich adapted the play into an opera, writing the libretto between them under the joint pseudonym of Paul Schott. Set in...

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...

Excessive in every material and conceptual aspect, hypertrophic, beyond the limits of anything reasonable, redundant in the text to desperation, with a minimal dramatic action that tests the ingenuity and patience of stage directors, with terrible vocal demands, inhumane for the protagonists. Exhausting for everyone, audience included, the Wagnerian Tristan und Isolde is in its overflow one of the most sublime and genius excesses created by Western culture. Once again we have been put...

Philosopher and composer, Theodor W. Adorno stated that Alban Berg’s Lulu is ‘one of those works that reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it’. It was composed between 1929 and 1935 when the composer died, premiered incomplete in 1937, and in a complete version in 1979. When Berg died he left only portions of the final act fully scored, and after Arnold Schönbergdeclined to complete the orchestration, Berg’s wife...

Composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher (Yehudi Menuhin was one of his pupils), George Enescu (1881-1955) is regarded by many as Romania’s most important musician. His sole opera Oedipe is generally acclaimed to be his greatest masterpiece, and yet, in Britain at least, it has been somewhat neglected. This is the first time it has ever appeared at the Royal Opera House, while the production, which premiered in Brussels in 2011, also represents the first time that the work...