Gloriana at the Royal Opera House

Richard Jones directs The Royal Opera's first production of Britten's opera exploring tensions between affairs of state and affairs of the heart.

This important new staging of Gloriana marks three major anniversaries: 60 years since the Queen's Coronation, 60 years since the opera's premiere at the Royal Opera House, and the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth.

Britten's portrait of the public and private faces of Elizabeth I is a brilliant depiction of the Tudor court and the tension between affairs of state and affairs of the heart. Focusing on Elizabeth's relationship with the young Earl of Essex, Gloriana captures the dichotomy between the public image of the Virgin Queen and her seething personal feelings – a familiar dichotomy in these days of celebrity-worship and media scrutiny.

Award-winning director Richard Jones (Il trittico, Anna Nicole) directs a Gloriana for our time, framing the depiction of the 16th-century Queen in a setting that re-creates the excitement of our own Queen's Coronation year. A superlative British cast brings to life this under-appreciated gem, a unique tribute both to the nation's monarch and to its greatest opera composer.