Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera spins out Pushkin’s short story on the dangers of gambling into a human tragedy centred on fate, a leitmotif permeating his dramatic work. At ENO it provided the backdrop to David Alden’s solipsistic psycho-drama focused on Hermann’s madness. It also provided Edward Gardner, the company’s Music Director since 2007, with his swansong.

In the programme for Between Worlds, Tansy Davies’ debut opera written with librettist Nick Drake, based on the events of 9/11, the composer writes that she was ‘driven by the desire to transform or transcend’ and that ‘our work must aim to match the power of the darkness, with light’. However, little about the work was redemptive or transcendent.

The culmination of Brecht and Weill’s tumultuous three-year collaboration, Mahagonny is a bizarre and difficult work. Expanded from their 1927 songspiel, the opera tells of the foundation of the city of Mahagonny by the outlaw Widow Begbick, and encompasses everything from economic collapse and impending ecological apocalypse, to the defeat of God himself.