Fiona Shaw directs Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy For Young Lovers in the third season of English National Opera/Young Vic collaborations. This follows her highly acclaimed operatic debut with Vaughan Williams’s Riders To The Sea for ENO in 2008.

The libretto for Elegy For Young Lovers, by WH Auden and Chester Kallman, revolves around a poet who devours those around him in order to nourish his art and his ego. It was premiered in 1961 and revised by the composer in 1986.

Elegy For Young Lovers composer Henze was born in Germany in 1926 and has lived through some of the most momentous events of the 20th century, both political and artistic. Prolific in his output, his work was influenced by a wide range of eclectic styles including neo-classicism, jazz, the twelve-tone technique and some rock and popular music.

Shaw, who directs Elegy For Young Lovers, is better known as a Laurence Olivier Award-winning actress whose credits include Electra, Good Person Of Sechuan, Machinal, Happy Days and, most recently, Mother Courage And Her Children.

Elegy For Young Lovers marks the UK opera conducting debut of Stefan Blunier.

Learn more about London operas within the West End.