George Benjamin’s Interludes and Aria from ‘Lessons in Love and Violence’, premiered by Simon Rattle, Barbara Hannigan, and the London Symphony Orchestra on 9 January 2025, has been praised by the national press. The 15-minute montage of excerpts, with Martin Crimp’s text from the 2018 opera’s ‘Pearl aria’ at its heart, was composed as a 70th birthday gift for Simon Rattle. Cast in seven unbroken movements, it toured subsequently to subsequent performances at the Philharmonie de Paris and Philharmonie Luxembourg.
Benjamin’s score combines the ravishing and the visceral in a way that only he can.
Evening Standard (Barry Millington) 13 January 2025 *****
…worthy of the occasion…Moody, dissonant, flamboyantly orchestrated and with a coiled tension that finally exploded like a volcano, it was thrillingly performed by the LSO, with Hannigan by turns taunting and tempestuous…
The Times (Richard Morrison) 10 January 2025 *****
…rich orchestral interludes, vital to the drama, have been woven together, absorbing all anew into a many-layered instrumental texture, full of momentous brass outbursts, tolling gongs and clangorous cimbalom…Time for the Royal Opera to revisit it?
The Observer (Fiona Maddocks) 18 January 2025 ****
… a stage work in which the orchestral writing often seems to take charge of the drama…woven into a seamless, richly scored sequence…
The Guardian (Andrew Clements) 13 January 2025 ****
The result is reminiscent of Berg’s suite from Lulu, both for being drawn from an opera and in its potent sense of suppressed danger ready to snuff out any fleeting spark of true love…Away from the opera house, Benjamin’s music sounds just as concentrated as before, compelling and expressive at every turn.
Financial Times (Richard Fairman) 13 January 2025 ****
…the sensual extravagance of [Benjamin’s] operatic writing is a recent development… Wave upon wave of Bergian, expressionist release crashed over the orchestra after the aria…Hannigan caressed a luscious melisma over the “slow radiance” of Martin Crimp’s text, and the controlled sensuality of the moment was worthy of Strauss and Hofmannsthal.
Bachtrack (Peter Quantrill) 10 January 2025 *****
Spring 2025 sees several outings for Benjamin and Crimp’s stage works. Picture a day like this, premiered at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2023, appears at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, conducted by Corinna Niemayer in February; in July 2025 she conducts the Austrian premiere of the work at the Tiroler Festspiele. In May, Katie Mitchell’s production of Written on Skin will be revived at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with Benjamin conducting a concert staging (directed by Benjamin Davis) with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia later that month. Balázs Kovalik directs a new production of the work with students from the Bayerischen Theaterakademie in March 2025 at Munich’s Prinzeregententheater, conducted by Peter Rundel. Benjamin will conduct a performance of his collaboration with Crimp Into the Little Hill as part of a focus at the Prague Spring Festival on 31 May with Ensemble Modern.