Jessica Niles

Sandra divides her time between her research into the melting ice caps and stand-up comedy. Disturbed by the impact of human activity on the environment, she wants to use humour to raise awareness. But people around her, even her own family, are sceptical. Just as Cassandra predicted the fall of Troy without being heeded, Sandra predicts the imminent approach of a terrible tragedy but no one is listening. Belgian composer Bernard Foccroulle, former director of La Monnaie and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, has chosen a highly topical theme for his first opera: ecological activism in the face of societal inertia. Cassandra's predictions may not have been heeded, but her story has been avidly read for over two thousand years.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla continues her high-profile championship of the works of the composer Mieczysław Weinberg with this new Salzburg Festival production of his final opera, The Idiot, with a libretto based on Dostoevsky’s great novel of innocence destroyed by corrupt society. Featuring music of great power and intensity, the opera, completed in 1985, showcases Weinberg’s remarkable skill as a musical dramatist, while this new production by Krzysztof Warlikowski promises to mark a watershed in its brief performance history.