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During canal construction in thirteenth-century China, mapmaker Chao Lin’s workers perform a play about an orphan who avenges his parents. Chao Lin learns that his own father was betrayed, plans revenge, and is executed for conspiracy; the actors then finish their play, in which the orphan succeeds.
In a modern Middle East conflict, Rinaldo is an army officer torn between his love of peace and military duty, while Armida is a television journalist covering a war in her occupied country. She enters his army camp intending to subvert the soldiers. When she and Rinaldo fall in love, she spirits him away in her helicopter to an enchanted Moorish city. His fellow soldiers try to free him, but he no longer wants to fight. Love prevails: the soldiers take up gardening, and Armida’s news organization stops covering wars and produces gardening programs.
Berthe tells Walther about her childhood with an old woman, a gem-laying bird and a dog, and how she stole the gems and fled. Eckbert becomes alarmed when Walther knows the dog’s name and later kills him. After the old woman reveals that she was also Walther and Hugo, and that Berthe was Eckbert’s half-sister, Eckbert goes insane and dies.
Harald Hardrada recounts his exploits and is persuaded by Tostig to invade England despite a warning from his dead brother Olaf. After farewell from his wives, the Norwegian army lands in England and is defeated at Stamford Bridge, where Harald dies.
Judith Weir’s opera reworks a Sicilian folktale as a contemporary parable. The entry does not detail the story.
The opera interweaves a medieval village legend with a modern story about excavations at King Casimir IV's tomb. In the legend, Christina agrees to marry a Green Man to spare villagers from an oppressive count, then breaks the bargain to marry Carl. A spider emerges from her hand and spreads plague; Christina traps it in her cousin's guitar and buries it in Casimir's tomb. In the modern story, a spider emerges when archaeologists open the tomb, and a deadly virus begins to affect them.
A traveller recounts how General K'an falsely accused the official Chao Tun, who fled with his wife and newborn son. Raised by a hermit, the son goes to the capital twenty years later to study and discovers the truth about his father's death. He deciphers a scroll revealing K'an's plot against the Emperor, warns the Emperor, and recovers his father's property.
Three Scottish folk stories are woven together: a son is exposed as the thief of his father’s inheritance; a father lured into a fairy hill returns years later without aging; and his grown daughter defeats the Devil after a preacher protects her with a prayer.
During canal construction in thirteenth-century China, mapmaker Chao Lin’s workers perform a play about an orphan who avenges his parents. Chao Lin learns that his own father was betrayed, plans revenge, and is executed for conspiracy; the actors then finish their play, in which the orphan succeeds.
In a modern Middle East conflict, Rinaldo is an army officer torn between his love of peace and military duty, while Armida is a television journalist covering a war in her occupied country. She enters his army camp intending to subvert the soldiers. When she and Rinaldo fall in love, she spirits him away in her helicopter to an enchanted Moorish city. His fellow soldiers try to free him, but he no longer wants to fight. Love prevails: the soldiers take up gardening, and Armida’s news organization stops covering wars and produces gardening programs.
Berthe tells Walther about her childhood with an old woman, a gem-laying bird and a dog, and how she stole the gems and fled. Eckbert becomes alarmed when Walther knows the dog’s name and later kills him. After the old woman reveals that she was also Walther and Hugo, and that Berthe was Eckbert’s half-sister, Eckbert goes insane and dies.
Harald Hardrada recounts his exploits and is persuaded by Tostig to invade England despite a warning from his dead brother Olaf. After farewell from his wives, the Norwegian army lands in England and is defeated at Stamford Bridge, where Harald dies.
Judith Weir’s opera reworks a Sicilian folktale as a contemporary parable. The entry does not detail the story.
The opera interweaves a medieval village legend with a modern story about excavations at King Casimir IV's tomb. In the legend, Christina agrees to marry a Green Man to spare villagers from an oppressive count, then breaks the bargain to marry Carl. A spider emerges from her hand and spreads plague; Christina traps it in her cousin's guitar and buries it in Casimir's tomb. In the modern story, a spider emerges when archaeologists open the tomb, and a deadly virus begins to affect them.
A traveller recounts how General K'an falsely accused the official Chao Tun, who fled with his wife and newborn son. Raised by a hermit, the son goes to the capital twenty years later to study and discovers the truth about his father's death. He deciphers a scroll revealing K'an's plot against the Emperor, warns the Emperor, and recovers his father's property.
Three Scottish folk stories are woven together: a son is exposed as the thief of his father’s inheritance; a father lured into a fairy hill returns years later without aging; and his grown daughter defeats the Devil after a preacher protects her with a prayer.