When Written on Skin had its premiere at the 2012 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, conducted by George Benjamin himself, it received a standing ovation. The opera's arrival at Covent Garden in 2013 was eagerly anticipated, and provided audiences with the opportunity to experience the work of two of Britain's greatest living artists. Benjamin previously collaborated with playwright Martin Crimp on Into the Little Hill, a magical retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale, and for this new work they joined forces with acclaimed stage director Katie Mitchell. For all three, the production marked their main-stage debut at the Royal Opera House. The tale, inspired by a medieval legend, tells of an ill-fated troubadour, drawn into a liaison with an innocent maiden. But they are observed by the jealous eye of her protector, who wreaks a shocking revenge on the young couple. Written on Skin draws on a 12th-century Occitan legend about the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh.

This new play breaks through the surface of contemporary debate to explore the messy, often violent nature of desire and the fluid, complicated roles that men and women play. Using Samuel Richardson’s novel, Pamela, as a provocation, six characters act out a dangerous game of sexual domination and resistance.

Ionesco’s iconic satire on mindlessness and conformity is given its first major UK revival since its Royal Court premiere in 1960, which was directed by Orson Welles starring Laurence Olivier. It happens inexplicably: One by one, a man's friends and neighbors turn into rhinoceroses, reducing the town to a perilous wasteland. In this brilliant restaging of Eugène Ionesco's absurdist allegory Rhinoceros, loneliness and horror consume the individual who resists a popular movement in which civilians succumb to the collective in its most monstrous, destructive form. Spare, physical, and haunting, celebrated French director Emmanuel Demarcy—Mota's internationally acclaimed staging teases out the archetypal quality of this classic work, whose fierce indictment of 20th-century totalitarianism retains its sting amid today's ideological climate.