.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
Asked at a pre-performance event why when approaching the age of 80 he had ventured on his first opera, Colin Matthews replied that he didn’t think he should leave it as late as his American colleague Elliott Carter, who essayed his own at the age of 90. The result, A Visit to Friends, with a libretto by the novelist William Boyd, is the latest, and biggest, surprise Matthews has sprung on us in a decades-long career studded with works of the highest quality.
Boyd’s scenario was elaborated from previously created material partly based on Chekhov’s short story A Visit to Friends, itself the source of The Cherry Orchard. Boyd and Matthews then envisaged a mythical opera discovered in a Moscow archive, libretto supposedly by Chekhov, composer unknown, and it is four scenes of the latter that form the core of A Visit to Friends.
