Tatjana Gürbaca’s new production of George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written on Skin has made a celebrated debut at Oper Frankfurt, where it is in rep until 5 April. The production – the eleventh the work has received since its 2012 debut at the Aix-en-Provence Festival – stars Bo Skovhus as the Protector, Iurii Iushkevich as the Boy, and soprano Elizabeth Reiteras as Agnès. It is conducted by Erik Nielsen with set design and lighting from Klaus Grünberg and costumes by Silke Willrett.
…a metaphorically enigmatic journey into the heart of knowledge…there are echoes of Berg, Debussy and Weill in Benjamin's beguilingly sensual music, which integrated the colours of unusual instruments, from glass harmonica to mandolin.
Musik Heute 1 March 2026
Benjamin's score is a shimmering marvel that is orchestrated in a varied way but always follows the action. The fact that the characters are their own narrators…offers the composer completely new narrative perspectives…contemporary theatre in a class of its own due to the theatrically conceived and cleverly crafted direction as well as the musical realisation.
Die Deutsche Bühne (Bernd Zegowitz) 3 March 2026
Crimp turns a gruesome love triangle into a multi-layered drama about love (or its impossibility), about emancipation and patriarchal power, about art and its sometimes destructive effect…Benjamin has composed an immensely delicate score for it…A music that touches but is full of suspense…an iridescent sound space that surrounds the stage…like an invisible aura…dramatic climaxes never sound superficial. Musical and scenic interpretation intertwine cleverly…an enigmatic atmosphere that contributes decisively to the effect of the work…a highlight of the current season.
Online Musik Magazin (Stefan Schmöe) 2 March 2026
…one of the strongest operas of the 21st century…surreal poetry of the unfathomable…Benjamin and Crimp created an opera that was simply magnificent in every fine ramification and concise condensation of music and text…a masterpiece of the 21st century…Erik Nielsen also finds his own approach to the exceptional score…an intense, subcutaneous audio theater that is hard to escape…[the production] is an important chapter in the history of interpretation of this enormous work.
Concerti (Peter Krause) 2 March 2026
…an orchestral marvel…Benjamin's score shimmers…storytelling that is tantamount to a psychoacoustic dramaturgy. While the protagonists contemplate their fate on stage, sounds emerge from the orchestra pit that comment on the events or clothe them in an emotionally charged atmosphere. Erik Nielsen discloses these details with meticulousness and sensitivity.
Klassik.com (Christiane Franke) 6 March 2026
The Frankfurt Opera has once again outdone itself…there is an impressionistic influence of Debussy, Ravel…there is the inspiration from Indonesian music, and Wozzeck…when the glass harmonica plays, it is very tender moment.
hr-2 Kultur (Bastian Korff) 2 March 2026
…it touches us in its innermost being…Nielsen’s musical direction is magnificent.
SWR Kultur (Bernd Künzig) 2 March 2026
Benjamin and Crimp’s first collaboration Into the Little Hill – premiered at the Festival d’Automne in 2006 – made its South Korean debut in concert at the Tongyeong International Music Festival on 28 March with Ensemble Modern and Toby Thatcher, with Fleur Barron and Jennifer France as soloists, as part of a focus on the composer. Benjamin and Crimp’s gritty, 40-minute retelling of the Pied Piper story also makes its Japanese debut in spring 2026, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain at Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, conducted by Pierre Bleuse, on 4 April.
In March 2026 Benjamin toured his Concerto for Orchestra with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, presenting the 17-minute work at the Philharmonie in Berlin, Ferrara;s Teatro Claudio Abbado (the work’s Italian premiere), Teatro degli Avvaloranti, and the Kölner Philharmonie. Benjamin has said that the piece attempts “to conjure a trace of the energy, humour, and spirit” of its dedicatee, though it occasionally moves into more turbulent terrain. Its various instrumental protagonists play multiple roles – both dramatic and sonoric – including a volatile solo tuba, elaborate horn duos, bubbling clarinets and two pairs of rumbling timpani.
Benjamin first conducted the orchestra in 2008, touring Palimpsests, and returned to them in 2020 to perform Dream of the Song – a 20-minute hybrid of song cycle and cantata setting poetry rooted in Granada – with Tim Mead and the SWR Vokalensemble.