One of the most discussed, praised, and successful of recent operas, L’Amour de Loin is a seductively beautiful tale of love’s unfathomable nature. The idea of impossible love was central to the explosion of poetry in Europe in the 12th century, and it has remained prominent in all the arts ever since. Similarly, death, for the poetic soul, is both an end and a culmination, an idea that the medium of opera has explored with unique insight throughout its history. L’Amour de Loin explores this same artistic territory in a way that is sensitive to both the sources of the medieval legend on which it is based and to the contemporary ear.
