Performer: Surrey Opera

While major opera houses mount a dazzling variety of new Verdi, Wagner and Britten productions, a smaller local company, Surrey Opera, has taken it upon themselves to remember George Lloyd by producing his “neglected” first opera, Iernin.

It had lain in the archives of the British Library since around 1986. Now, rediscovered by a PhD student and transcribed by Stephen Anthony-Brown, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s opera Thelma has at last received its world première in the capable hands of Surrey Opera.It’s a small miracle that Thelma, written between 1907 and 1909, came to be performed at all.