Hilary Summers

After last season’s The Dante Project, the Paris Opera continues to explore the music of contemporary composer Thomas Adès with the French premiere of The Exterminating Angel. Inspired by Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist film, which offered a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, the work begins with a dinner among upper-class friends in a plush mansion after an opera performance. But, gradually, a mysterious force prevents the fifteen guests from leaving the reception. In this confinement for no apparent reason, drawn out over several days, the veneer of propriety cracks, revealing the worst of human nature. Thomas Adès has written a rich and tense score, amplifying the libretto’s strange atmosphere with unusual instruments such as the ondes Martenot. The Paris Opera has entrusted the staging of this huis-clos to Calixto Bieito. The director has long been fascinated by Buñuel’s universe.

Captain's daughter Josephine and common sailor Ralph Rackstraw are in love. However, their relationship is complicated by her arranged marriage to the high-ranking Sir Joseph Porter. A secret about the characters' true identities revealed by Little Buttercup, which leads to a farcical resolution. English National Opera staging directed by Cal McCrystal.

A tragic and secretive romance ensues over many years after two men meet while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in this opera based on Annie Proulx's short story and its subsequent Oscar-winning film adaptation.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams... So begins Deborah Warner’s captivating 2008 production of Purcell’s timeless opera Dido and Æneas: a careful warning that suits the tragic story only too well. Swedish mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman as a disarming Dido is at the head of a stellar cast joined by Les Arts Florissants under William Christie’s direction.