“Opera: Passion, Power and Politics”

The V&A (Victorian & Albert) Museum exhibition “Opera: Passion, Power and Politics” designed to take the visitor on “a vividly immersive, audio-visual journey through almost 400 years of opera – from its origins in late-Renaissance Italy to its international explosion in the 20th and 21st centuries – told through the lens of seven premieres in seven cities, from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in Venice to Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in St Petersburg.”

The exhibition features more than 300 objects, including Mozart’s piano for The Marriage of Figaro; the original score of Verdi’s Nabucco; and Salvador Dalí’s costume designs for Richard Strauss’s Salome. The exhibition is designed to allow the visitor to discover how the creation of opera reflects the social, political, artistic and economic conversations that define cities, and explore the complete process of making opera, from libretto to score, design to performance