The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a choral and orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten, composed mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, in the English county of Warwickshire, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
The Makropulos Affair is a Czech opera in 3 acts, with music and libretto by Leoš Janáček. Janáček based his opera on the play Věc Makropulos by Karel Čapek. Composed between 1923 and 1925, The Makropulos Affair was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for "Simple Song #3" from the film Youth.
Gerald Barry is an Irish composer.
Jonathan Dove is an English composer of opera, choral works, plays, films, and orchestral and chamber music. He has arranged a number of operas for English Touring Opera and the City of Birmingham Touring Opera, including in 1990 an 18-player two-evening adaptation of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for CBTO. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001 to 2006.
El Niño is an opera-oratorio by the contemporary American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Willard White, the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, the London Voices, La Maîtrise de Paris, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on BBC Television.
David Blake is an English composer and founder member of the Department of Music at the University of York.
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein is an opéra bouffe, in three acts and four tableaux by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. The story is a satirical critique of unthinking militarism and concerns a spoiled and tyrannical young Grand Duchess who learns that she cannot always get her way.
Julietta is an opera by Bohuslav Martinů, who also wrote the libretto, in French, based on the play Juliette ou la Clé des songes by the French author Georges Neveux. A libretto in Czech was later prepared for its premiere which took place at the Prague National Theatre on 16 March 1938. Julietta has become widely considered as Martinů's masterpiece.
Ercole amante is an opera in a prologue and five acts by Francesco Cavalli. Its Italian libretto is by Francesco Buti, based on Sophocles' The Trachiniae and on the ninth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The first performance took place on 7 February 1662 in the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries in Paris.
The Out-of-Towners is a live album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett recorded at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich on July 28, 2001 and released by ECM on August 30, 2004. Jarrett's trio—the Standards trio—features rhythm section Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette.
Kommilitonen! is an opera by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The libretto is by David Pountney, who was also the director of the premiere performances in March 2011.
Mansfield Park is a 2011 chamber opera in two acts by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on the 1814 novel by Jane Austen. Initially composed for four handed piano, it has been set to music for 13 piece orchestral ensemble. It tells the story of poor relation Fanny Price, sent at age 10 to live with her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, at his family estate, Mansfield Park.
Keith Warner is a British opera director, designer and translator. He is noted for his flamboyant stagings of Richard Wagner's operas.
Elena Langer is a Russian-born British composer of opera and other contemporary classical music. Her work has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Zurich Opera, Carnegie Hall, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, Wigmore Hall, Opera national du Rhin, Strasbourg, and Milton Court, Barbican Centre. She studied piano and composition at the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow and composition at the Moscow Conservatoire; in 1999 she moved to London and studied composition at the Royal College of Music (1999–2000) with Julian Anderson and the Royal Academy of Music (2001–03) with Simon Bainbridge.
The Merchant of Venice is an opera by André Tchaikowsky (1935–1982) to a libretto, based on the Shakespeare play, by John O'Brien. Written between 1968 and 1982, it was first performed in 2013 at the Bregenz Festival. The British premiere was presented by the Welsh National Opera in September 2016.
Sukanya is an opera composed by Ravi Shankar, with libretto by novelist Amit Chaudhuri. It is based on the mythological tale of Sukanya from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, and combines Western operatic conventions with Indian vocal music, konnakol, and Indian instruments.
Roy Frederick Wales BEM was a British choral, orchestral and operatic conductor, and a recipient of a British Empire Medal for Services to Choral Music in HM the Queen's 2020 New Year Honours.
Bushra El-Turk is a British composer and contemporary music educator of Lebanese parents. Named by the BBC as "one of the most inspiring 100 Women of today", she has written numerous compositions for live concerts, dance, theatre and multi-media performances, performed and broadcast on radio and television by prestigious musicians in various countries of Europe and the Middle East.
