Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Harrison Birtwistle’s large-scale operas have not travelled a great deal, so it is good that his Gawain will be ...

There’s long been a hue and cry to call The Emperor’s New Clothes on Harrison Birtwistle’s music. I am disinclined to join this effort to debunk: one must respect and admire a composer of such ...

Less sympathy is extended to Ariadne, the Minotaur's bored gate-keeper. Her efforts to secure herself a one-way ticket off Crete by eloping with Theseus - who appears on the island with several fellow ...

A clip from the Royal Opera House production of The Minotaur, a story about a half-bull, half-man, imprisoned in a labyrinth on the island of Crete. Each year young women and young men are sacrificed ...

The grim Greek myth of the Minotaur, half-beast and half-human, has been brought to life in a new, blood-drenched opera by leading British composer Harrison Birtwistle. The 73-year-old, dubbed the ...

In Ovid’s Metamorphosis the story of Theseus and the Minotaur only takes up 30 lines or so. Since then, however, it has been retold many times: from Dante’s half-man half-bull described as the ...

Whenever a new work comes to the Royal Opera House stage, thoughts tend to focus on the simple question of whether it is a hit or a miss. The general consensus in 2008 was that Sir Harrison Birtwistle ...

The Minotaur, Royal Opera House, London on facebook (opens in a new window) The Minotaur, Royal Opera House, London on linkedin (opens in a new window) ...

In addition to the monster of Greek myth with its insatiable appetite for humans, there is a band of blood-spattered harpies with rattling wings that gorge themselves on the Minotaur’s leftovers.

Well I suppose the answer must be a strong and well-paced plot and enough variation in the music to keep the audience gripped. On both of those counts, Harrison Birtwhistle's retelling of the Greek ...