The world premiere recording of Thomas Adès’ Five Spells from The Tempest was released in March 2025 on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s label, conducted by the composer. The 22-minute suite of orchestral highlights from his 2003 opera appears alongside concert hall-realisations of his music for the stage: the Inferno Suite from the ballet Dante and Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face.
On 2 September Adès leads the Proms debut of Five Spells from The Tempest with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, alongside music by Gabriella Smith and Sibelius. It was premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele in May 2022; it received its UK premiere from the orchestra and Adès at the Royal Festival Hall in February 2023.
Writing in the Guardian, Andrew Clements called it “a shapely precis, flecked with glistening instrumental colours”. Since Adès has presented the piece with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. It is also available as Four Spells from the Tempest, at 16 minutes in length.
Adès described Five Spells in an interview with the LPO:
I wanted to evoke a storm that is the result of a kind of geometrical magic, engineered by Prospero…The next movement is Ariel’s first appearance…Ariel is the wind, and Prospero organises her into a storm. That’s what composing is to me – organising the air into a moving geometry.
The next movement is the love scene, where they become husband and wife on the beach as the waves wash over them. I wanted this to be a chance to hear their harmonies merge into one big tutti (all players) climax at the end.
The fourth movement is the one moment where you actually witness a magic spell in real time…The final movement returns to the purity of the earth, sky, and sea, with Caliban alone – a little like Marlowe’s idea of der Liebe – the beloved earth, on its own.
On 8 May a new production of The Tempest opens at Staatstheater Kassel, directed by Julia Lwowski and conducted by Marco Comin. Filippo Bettoschi sings Prospero, with Marie-Dominique Ryckmanns in the stratospheric coloratura soprano role of Ariel, with Johannes Strauss as Caliban, Maren Engelhardt as Miranda, and Diego Godoy as Ferdinand. The production, in rep until 21 June, is designed by Mirella Oestricher and lit by Jürgen Kolb, with video by Martin Mallon.
Lwowski’s is the 6th production the opera has received since its 2004 premiere, following the inaugural staging by Tom Cairns at London’s Royal Opera House, which subsequently appeared at the Royal Danish Opera and Opéra National du Rhin. A second production from Keith Warner followed at the Oper Frankfurt (2010, revived 2014). In 2022 and 2024 Adès conducted revivals of Robert Lepage’s production, with choreography by Crystal Pite, at the Teatro alla Scala and Wiener Staatsoper; in 2014 the Deutsche Grammophon DVD of the show from the Metropolitan Opera won a Grammy Award.