Król Roger

The story concerns the enlightenment of the Christian King Roger II by a young shepherd who represents pagan ideals. Kasper Holten’s production (The Royal Opera’s first) of Król Roger (King Roger) brought the opera back to the London stage after an absence of almost 40 years. Karol Szymanowski’s masterpiece powerfully presents the dilemmas of culture versus nature and man versus beast, and movingly depicts King Roger’s inner struggles as he moves from an impossible life of repressed desires to the other extreme, giving in to his own demons....

Mussorgsky: Sorochintsy Fair (Komische Oper Berlin)

A devil is at work in the Ukrainian village of Sorochintsy, terrifying residents and travellers alike. Among them a farmer whose daughter is not allowed to marry her lover because her quarrelsome stepmother is against it.

The Golden Cockerel

‘A beautiful song – a shame that it shows such disrespect to the Mayor!’ This remark from the score of The Golden Cockerel highlights the delicious ambiguity of this work. Principally inspired by Washington Irving and Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov called on the talents of Vladimir Belsky, an author of other libretti of a fairy-tale, legendary nature and an expert on Russian folk literature. The composer, a genius at orchestration, has given us sparkling music, with oriental touches, that creates fully rounded characters. This is the perfect occas...