In the locked room

An opera. In the Locked Room trades off a story by Thomas Hardy though changes much in the course of re-interpreting Hardy’s account of obsessive and irrational love. Hardy’s heroine, Ella, is married to a gunsmith; it is, in intellectual, cultural and spiritual terms, a morganatic marriage. While the couple are holidaying, Ella discovers that a locked room in the house they have rented is permanently let to a poet, though he rarely visits. The locked room becomes, as does the poet, an idée fixe for Ella.

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