A Roman emperor drowns in grief while his empire demands war—literally sung.
Rufus Wainwright's original opera finds Emperor Hadrian devastated after his lover Antinous drowns in the Nile River. While matters of state encroach on his grief, and advisors clamour for war against a radical new threat to the Empire, Hadrian slips out of time to re-encounter the vision and reality of Antinous—and learn the truth about what happened on the Nile.
Score
Wainwright's lush, anachronistic melodies—Baroque pop meets imperial doom.
Acting
Hampson's shattered Hadrian, Bell's ethereal Antinous—devastating chemistry.
Director
Peter Hinton
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Wainwright spent over a decade developing this, calling it his 'gay marriage to opera'—Antinous was real, deified after death, and nearly erased from history.
The 2018 world premiere marked one of the first major operas centering an explicitly gay Roman emperor—Hadrian's grief became a queer reclamation of classical tragedy.
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