"Elizabeth Maconchy at the Royal Opera House Its eeriness and its fusion of grief and love are underlined by Maconchy's blend of gritty and powerfully poetic music"
– Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph
The Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Artists will perform The Departure (1961) by composer Elizabeth Maconchy and librettist Anne Ridler on 1-9 May 2026 in the Linbury Theatre, as part of a triple bill of operas by women composers, Tales of Love and Loss. Just two characters, supported by a chorus, bring to life a poignant story of love and loss over the opera’s brief single act. Peggy Wu will conduct the Britten Sinfonia in a production directed by Talia Stern, making her Royal Opera debut.
Tales of Love and Loss | 1-9 May 2026 | Tickets
Elizabeth Maconchy was a composer of great versatility and unfailing integrity, amply deserving of a British critic’s description of her as ‘one of the most substantial composers these islands have yet produced’. Born to Irish parents in Hertfordshire on 19 March 1907, she grew up in rural Ireland, playing the piano and writing music from the age of six. She studied at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams, who remained a lifelong friend; but she was attracted less by English pastoralism than by the central European modernism of Bartók and Janáček, and she completed her studies with K.B. Jirák in Prague. She lived in an Essex village with her husband, the scholar and medical historian William LeFanu, to whom she was married for over sixty years; the younger of their two daughters is the composer Nicola LeFanu. ‘Betty’ Maconchy, as she was affectionately known by many, died in November 1994.
More operas by Elizabeth Maconchy
The Sofa (1957) 40 min
Libretto by Ursula Vaughan Williams Listen
The Three Strangers (1967) 40 min
Libretto by the composer, from a short story by Thomas Hardy
