The Royal Opera, Thomas Ades

Thomas Adès conducts a huge ensemble cast of world-class singers in the UK premiere of his latest opera, inspired by Luis Buñuel’s iconic film.

The opera has a libretto by Adès and Tom Cairns, who directs the production, and is based on Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza’s screenplay for Buñuel’s 1962 film El á??ngel exterminador. The opera is co- commissioned and co-produced by The Royal Opera, The Salzburg Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, and the Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen.

Edmundo and Lucia Nobile (sung by American tenor Charles Workman and South African soprano Amanda Echalaz) invite friends over for an opulent dinner party. While the guests enjoy their food, the servants disappear one by one. Afterwards the visitors retire to the salon for an evening of music and conversation but soon find that they are mysteriously incapable of leaving the room.

Adès chose the film as the basis for his third opera as ‘It's territory that I like very much because it looks as though the people are in a room, but it’s not really about the room, they’re actually trapped in their own heads’. Described as a ‘circular vision of hell’, the surreal scenario represents a breakdown of order into chaos.