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Thomas Adès wrote the chamber opera Powder Her Face in 1995, at the age of 24, to a joint commission from London's Almeida Opera and the Cheltenham Festival. Its success, together with a string of other compositions, brought Adès real international recognition and resulted in him being hailed as the next Benjamin Britten. Since its première, it has been produced in America, Australia and throughout Europe, repeatedly generating press excitement.
To a libretto by Philip Hensher, the piece is based on the life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, a woman brazenly avaricious for money and sexual experience but whose story, Adès says, shows that "even horrible people are tragic." In the early 1990s, the aged and isolated duchess is seen living at...