Donation Timeline

Saariaho had not thought herself capable of writing an opera until she saw Peter Sellars' production of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise (1983) in Salzburg in 1992. It's a good thing she saw that production because L'Amour de loin was immediately recognised as a major work. Bearing similarities to both Tristan und Isolde (1865) and Pelleas et Melisande (1902), this hypnotic work tells a story set in the 12th century of love at a great distance.

This dance-opera from experimental composer Pauline Oliveros retells the Ancient Greek myth of Io from a "matriarchal perspective", weaving the story into a multimedia theatrical event.

This video-opera by titan of minimalism Steve Reich aims to grapple with the rise of modern technology, focusing in three sections on the Hindenburg Disaster, nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll, and Dolly the Sheep. Incorporating elements of documentary with live music, in performance it really works.

Oscar-winner Rachel Portman adapted the beloved novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for her only opera to date. Dubbed a "Magical Opera", the work has already delighted children across the world.

After Powder Her Face, Thomas Adès premiered The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, working with librettist Meredith Oakes to adapt Shakespeare's play. The work was a huge critical success, and has been performed around the world in the majority of years since the premiere. A stupendous opera.

Fans of the film Oppenheimer should flock to see this opera about the run up to the test of the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos. The sensational aria "Batter my Heart" has become a particular audience favourite.

From the opening moments of this two-hander chamber opera a visceral and tightly-bound world is called into being. George Benjamin worked with playwright Martin Crimp to create this eerie, devastating retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story. The work has extraordinary resonances in multiple directions. Shadwell staged it to critical acclaim in 2015.

Unsuk Chin's first opera was on a subject that her teacher György Ligeti (Le Grand Macabre, 1978) had long dreamed of approaching. The work was premiered in Munich under the baton of Kent Nagano. Since then it has become something of a cult hit among new opera enthusiasts.

Birtwistle returned to Greek myth again with this opera which premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The work reinterprets the minotaur myth, focusing on what the duality of half beast and half man would really mean. Heart-rending dreamscapes are opened, and the Minotaur becomes a complex figure. A major achievement.

This chamber opera was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival, and Birtwistle takes the opportunity to once again interrogate opera's founding myth, that of Orpheus and Euridice, as he had in The Mask of Orpheus (1986) and The Second Mrs Kong (1994). The Corridor stretches out the moment of Orpheus turning back around to check Euridice is following him as he leads her out of the underworld.

A 75-minute monodrama for soprano which explores the life of Émilie du Châtelet, the 18th century mathematician and philosopher, who died due to complications in childbirth. She is pregnant in this opera, and the work centres a female character in ways that are unusual in the history of opera.

An operatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous play, this work manages to be genuinely hilarious. While many commentators have focused on the madness and surreal nature of Barry's creation, the work also carries some darker undertones, jackboots heard marching as the plot revolves around good breeding. A tour de force.

George Benjamin teamed up with Martin Crimp again after their Into the Little Hill (2006) to create something larger that deals with themes of artistic creation and violence and their interweaving. It was a stupendous success when premiered at the Royal Opera House, with audiences falling in love with its tightly controlled text allied to moments of startling musical beauty.

Blanchard's first opera, about the African-American welterweight boxer Emile Griffith, was described by the composer as an "opera in jazz", and came about through a collaboration between Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Jazz St. Louis. Blanchard has since composed another opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2019), which became the first opera by a black composer to be premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Based on Dylan Thomas' dreamlike radio play which explores the night in the life of a welsh fishing village, this opera was premiered in Swansea and then travelled to Quebec and New York, receiving positive reviews.

Donnacha Dennehy is one of Ireland's best known composers, and for his first opera, he teamed up with writer and director Enda Walsh to create this haunting work about a woman planning her suicide. The work was commissioned by Landmark Productions and Wide Open Opera, and was premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Based on the 1962 Louis Buñel film of the same name, in which a group of wealth dinner guests find themselves mysteriously unable to leave. Fiona Maddocks in The Observer said that: "It’s as if all music is buoyantly alive and coexisting in its two-hour span." Thomas Adès has now made three major contributions to the story of opera with his surreal and voracious musical imagination. Hopefully there will be more.

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2019, this quietly devastating opera was initially premiered in Vilnius in Lithuania, at the National Gallery of Art. The audience watch a beach from above, as beach goers go about normal, mundane beach activities. What emerges is a heartbreaking story about our relationship with the planet.

György Ligeti recommended to György Kurtág that he watch a production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame in 1957. Kurtag was deeply affected by the experience, and 61 years later, he produced his adaption of Beckett's play, in a commission by La Scala in Milan. Kurtag worked on the opera for seven years, and has said that his studies of Monteverdi helped him to write the work. On premiere the work has been hailed as the equal to Beckett's play. Apparently Kurtag is now working on a second opera at age 98. Everyone should celebrate such an indomitable operatic spirit.

Prior to composing this opera, Blanchard had already had an illustrious career, including repeated collaborations with celebrated film director Spike Lee. This opera, which was premiered at Opera Theatre St Louis, made history as the first opera by a black composer to be performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Based on a memoir, the piece tells the story of journalist Charles Blow as he comes of age having grown up in poverty. Blanchard had previously composed the opera Champion (2013). A big shout out in this year to composer Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh, who premiered the icy horror Anthropocene at Scottish Opera, which has since been mounted in Salzburg.

Aucoin, like so many others, returned to the myth of Orpheus for this 2020 opera, which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera. Based on the 2003 Sarah Ruhl play of the same name, and with playwright acting as librettist, Aucoin wanted to put the spotlight on Eurydice herself rather than her husband.

At its premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, this work was almost universally heralded as a modern masterpiece. It weaves together the two connected stories of a wedding and a school shooting ten years earlier, with the plot taking place in nine different languages. Saariaho attended the London premiere of the work in 2023, little over a month before her death. With the operas she gave us, she is, and will be, remembered as an enormous figure in the history of opera.

Oliver Leith's first opera caused a sensation when it was premiered in London to huge critical acclaim. Based on the Gus Van Sant film of the same name, a fictionalised account of the last days of Kurt Cobain. Leith took an awareness of sound to a new level, bringing an intense focus onto everyday sounds such as the pouring of cereal.

In 2010, Raskatov adapted Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart into an opera, to huge critical acclaim. In 2023 he followed it up with an adaption of George Orwell's allegorical novel about a group of animals who stage a revolution on their farm. The work was premiered at Dutch National Opera.

This opera by Isabella Gellis draws on folk traditions of the South West of England, including Morris Dancing, to tell a tale about the Devil, a child, a rabbit and a druid. It is Shadwell's first opera commission and will receive a world-premiere concert performance at the Nevill Holt Festival in June 2024. We are seriously excited to be contributing to the long and inspiring history of opera commissions.

The history of opera is one of experimentation, change, and exuberant creativity. A look at the last 30 years shows that opera remains a vital and experimental art form, existing in a state of true conversation with today's world. We want to commission more works that will be celebrated as classics in the future. By donating you can help us with that mission.

Will opera exist in another 427 years? Hard to say, but we hope so. Donate for 2026 and do something marvellous whilst expressing hope for an operatic future in 2452.

The range of possible futures for opera is enormous. A composer holds within them a unique vision for the telling of stories through music and singing, and who knows which operas yet to be written will come to be regarded as influential classics? At Shadwell we are determined to find out.

We'd love to be able to update this year shortly with a real opera that we're commissioning. We want to become a powerhouse of new opera that allows us to make work that rings with the sounds and rhythms of contemporary life. Doing that is the surest route to securing opera's long-term vitality as an art form.

Some people today are forecasting the death of opera. We think that's nonsense - dramatically acting out stories to music is as old as time, and isn't going anywhere. There are thousands more operas waiting to be written.

Our mission is to turbocharge the opera scene in the UK by commissioning as many new works as we can. If we're still doing this in 2030 it will be because people have been incredibly generous in supporting us to develop the careers of the brightest young composers.

Become an Opera God by donating to claim the year 2050. We're not expecting anyone to claim this year, but nor are the characters in opera seria expecting Gods or Kings to descend from the heavens, bringing with them justice and truth.