FRANZ SCHUBERT: Die Schöne Müllerin

FRANZ SCHUBERT: Die Schöne Müllerin

The first of Schubert’s song cycles set to a text by Wilhelm Müller, Die Schöne Müllerin (1823) is a tragic story of love, death, and youthful idiocy.

KAIJA SAARIAHO: L’amour de Loin

KAIJA SAARIAHO: L’amour de Loin

The music of Kaija Saariaho’s beautiful opera, L’amour de Loin (2000), is gorgeously atmospheric but, like so many operatic romances, the plot is more than a little bizarre…

FRANZ SCHUBERT: Der Zwerg

FRANZ SCHUBERT: Der Zwerg

The lyrics to Schubert’s lied, Der Zwerg (1822), are taken from a Romantic ballad written by Matthäus von Collin. Although the music is undoubtedly powerful, the story of the failed romance between a lady and a dwarf is somewhat more suspect…

OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Saint François D’Assise, Act I

OLIVER MESSIAEN: Saint François d’Assise, Act I

For his religious opera, Saint François d’Assise (1983), Oliver Messiaen claimed to have chosen this particular character because he considered Francis to be ‘the saint who most resembles Christ’. We’ll just have to see about that…

PETER MAXWELL DAVIES: Resurrection

PETER MAXWELL DAVIES: Resurrection

In Peter Maxwell’s Davies’s short avant-garde opera, Resurrection (1987), a mute child is indoctrinated by our evil modern society, with weird reprocussions.

RICHARD WAGNER: Ring Cycle, Part 1 – Das Rheingold

RICHARD WAGNER: Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold

In the first part of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold (1852), the unthinking actions of a Dwarf, a God and some Giants spark events that will eventually lead to the apocalypse.