By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 11 October 2010]

The tragedy of King Lear casts a long and dark shadow. Few composers have successfully turned Shakespeare’s play into an opera: it was one of Verdi’s most treasured projects, but he never brought it to fruition, and Aribert Reimann’s Lear, widely performed at the end of the 1970s not least thanks to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s championing of the title role, is less visible now.