Following a sell-out vist to Edinburgh in 2009, Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales, in collaboration with the Traverse Theatre, present a new production of Philip Glass’s chamber opera, In the Penal Colony. Based on Franz Kafka’s powerful short story of the same name, the opera follows three characters caught in an allegorical tale of idealism: the prisoner condemned to death by a ‘special machine’, the officer fixated on delivering justice and the horrified visitor who must bear witness.

Philip Glass is one of the world’s most popular and distinctive contemporary composers. With a libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer, the dark, pulsating energy of the work is reinforced by an on-stage string quintet from The Orchestra of Scottish Opera.

‘Music Theatre Wales is one of Britain’s most able and inventive touring opera companies’ Opera Now

Conductor Michael Rafferty

Director Michael McCarthy