The Royal Opera House in London has announced the world premiere of George Benjamin’s new opera, Lessons in Love and Violence. The composer’s third collaboration with Martin Crimp will receive its first performance on 10 May 2018.
Inspired by Elizabethan drama, the opera considers what space, if any, exists for love and human affection inside the dangerous machinery of power. The story focuses on a king who is compelled to choose between love and political hard-headedness. His decisions allow his country to slide into civil war, and set his own wife and son against him. When his son in turn is given bruising lessons in realpolitik, he performs (albeit with the object of restoring peace) a terrifying act of violence.
George Benjamin embarks on Lessons in Love and Violence