94 - Alban Berg's Wozzeck

A work of searing intensity set in a bleak ugly world. A touchstone of 20th Century music, it's jarring modernism and dissonance can be brutal and unforgiving. But as well as being musically fascinating it gives singing actors some real characters to work with...

Here is Simon Keenleyside braving the recent Royal Opera Covent Garden production of 2013... "Braving" in that after singing the demanding title role, the singer is submerged in a tank of bloody water for a sizeable section of the last act, after his suicide...