Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra – a work he called a cantata but which is more like sung psychodrama – uses the poet Robert Lowell’s translation of Racine’s Phèdre to explore the fallout from the character ...
A crucial premise makes sense of apparent obscurity. The 79-year-old Henze fell into a coma after completing Act 1, which ends with the deaths of Hippolytus and Phaedra, and recovered to electrify Act ...