Public booking opens TODAY for our Summer 2013 operas.
Click on the links below for more information about the operas, and to buy tickets:
Sunken Garden
A world première and a brand new collaboration with the Barbican. Sunken Garden is a film-opera composed/directed by Michel van der Aa with a libretto by Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell.
April 12 - 20 at The Barbican Centre (7 performances)
La bohème
Jonathan Miller’s classic production returns with ENO favourites Gwyn Hughes Jones and Kate Valentine in the lead roles.
April 29 - Jun 29 (14 performances)
Wozzeck
Carrie Cracknell makes her English National Opera directorial début in Berg’s theatrical masterpiece, coming to the Coliseum for the first time in 25 years. ENO Music Director Edward Gardner conducts.
May 11 - 25 (6 performances)
The Perfect American
The UK première of Philip Glass’s latest opera, commissioned by ENO and Teatro Real Madrid to celebrate Glass’s 75th birthday. Based on Peter Stephan Jungk’s novel, The Perfect American imagines the final years of Walt Disney’s life in a haunting and thrilling production, directed by Improbable’s Phelim McDermott, who returns to ENO following his spectacular production of Satyagraha. Designed by leading international designer Dan Potra, whose work on the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games ceremony was widely acclaimed. Conducted by Gareth Jones with Christopher Purves playing the title role.
Jun 1 - 28 (9 performances)
Death in Venice
ENO celebrates Britten’s centenary with a revival of Deborah Warner’s 2007 production of Death in Venice, conducted by Edward Gardner.
Jun 14-26 (5 performances)
Billy Budd presents us with some dangers. One of them is the considerable technical challenge of the music in all sections of the orchestra throughout the score. We are accustomed to such challenges, however; we know how to work our way round them individually and collectively. Moreover this particular work is familiar to us from our 2005 Billy Budd production. We are familiar, too, as a group, with the Britten idiom and style from recent productions (Turn of the Screw, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Grimes, Death in Venice, etc.) No, the real danger, it seems to me, is that selfsame familiarity (I will not go so far as to call it arrogance!) because it extends way back, for most of us individually, to English childhoods and English musical upbringings in this country replete with childhood, student and amateur experiences of English composers – Delius, Holst, Butterworth, Brittten etc. (Let’s not forget how keen Benjamin Britten was on the amateur performance and experience of music, specifically writing for it within compositions such as Noye’s Fludde and Saint. Nicholas). I believe we have, to some extent, a sense of being in our own English cultural comfort zone as we play through this remarkable work of an (almost) contemporary genius.
Read More
TV Presenter Kirsten O’Brien has never been to the opera. Never! So, we’re on a mission to make sure she does.
She’s selected Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd as her first opera. It’s got a lot going for it as she found out when she went behind the scenes at rehearsals.
Watch, enjoy and share!
