About the work
1984 is an opera in two acts by Lorin Maazel, to a libretto by J. D. McClatchy and Thomas Meehan based on George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was Maazel's first opera after decades of a conducting career; it premiered on 3 May 2005 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in a production by Robert Lepage, with Simon Keenlyside as Winston Smith.
Plot
In a totalitarian surveillance state, Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth rewriting the past to suit the ruling Party. He secretly begins a forbidden love affair with Julia and inwardly rebels against the omnipresent control of Big Brother. After his arrest, he is tortured and manipulated at the Ministry of Love until he fully submits to the Party's ideology.
Cultural significance
The premiere drew enormous media attention but was met largely with rejection from British critics, who faulted the score for a stylistically uneven mix of echoes of Strauss, Britten and Berg without a distinct voice of its own. Despite the lukewarm reviews, the Covent Garden performances sold out.