The Duenna

Libretto by the composer and Christopher Hassall after Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy (E,G). Performing Edition (1991) by David Drew.

As an operatic project, The Duenna provided Gerhard with the perfect combination of an English play on a Spanish subject, reuniting the split cultural aspects of his life. He was drawn by Sheridan's sparkling, comic dialogue, but also by the Seville setting with "its colour and atmosphere, its social climate; wealth and fashion rubbing elbows with beggars, gypsies and picaresque rogues". Gerhard's only opera was a labour of love in straitened circumstances, uncommissioned with little hope of staging, but it achieved a radio concert performance in 1949 with a cast including Peter Pears. The Duenna was finally acclaimed on the stage in 1992, more than 20 years after Gerhard's death, thanks to the performing edition by David Drew, with a production shared between the Teatro Lirico Nacional in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and Opera North in Leeds.