Some important news slipped out last night. During a discussion about Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House, George Benjamin and Martin Crimp revealed they are collaborating on another opera.
All they were prepared to disclose at this stage was the timing - the interval between the new one and Written on Skin is the same as the gap between Written on Skin and their first collaboration, Into the Little Hill - which puts it at 2018 by my reckoning.
After all their trumpeting about support for new opera, let's hope the ROH have put their money where their mouth is this time and commissioned it. It's frustrating for us and ought to be embarrassing for the ROH that the brilliant - and British - Written on Skin and Into the Little Hill spent months travelling around Europe before making it on to native turf.
The ROH hope to make a podcast of the interview available in the next few days - well worth a listen if you'd like to know why George started composing the opera from the middle, not the start, and more about the compositional process.
While we're waiting, here's a video made by Peter Hobday, an actor in Katie Mitchell's production of Written on Skin. The words are George's, the actions - not.
