Mark Le Brocq

The Silver Tassie is an opera in four acts by the English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. The English libretto was written by Amanda Holden based on the 1927/28 play of the same name by Seán O'Casey. The opera was composed between 1997 and 1999.

A team of scientists becomes trapped in the frozen Arctic wastelands. Tensions rise and relationships crumble, and then something appears, out of the ice. This fourth collaboration between composer Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh is their most ambitious to date. With unrelenting drama and superb storytelling, Anthropocene engages with the crucial issues of our time – climate change, sacrifice and our ceaseless quest for knowledge.

The English National Opera first mounted David Alden's production of Ariodante, one of Handel's greatest masterpieces, in 1993. It met with unanimous critical and popular acclaim, and this 1996 revival features many of the leading singers from the original production. Ariodante is Handel's 1735 setting of an episode from Ariosto, in which the King of Scotland's daughter is treacherously accused of infidelity to her promised husband. The range of feelings provoked as the characters develop is caught in music of quite extraordinary emotional power, even by Handel's own exalted standards.