The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is the fifth Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, and premiered in New York City on 31 December 1879. It made its London debut on 3 April 1880, and was warmly received with the critical consensus being that it represented a significant advance on the duo’s earlier works. The Herald in New York suggested that ‘the new work is in every respect superior to the Pinafore, the text more humorous, the music more elegant and more...

Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel is a new opera by composer Iain Bell and librettist Fiona Jenkins, and represents a co-commission between English National Opera and Opera North. Though the figure of the killer has enjoyed much attention as his identity, motive and mindset have been speculated on throughout the ages, the women he dispatched and mutilated have been more or less forgotten. This opera intends to redress the balance by considering the poverty they experienced that put...