About the work
Assassinio nella cattedrale is a two-act tragedy for music with an intermezzo by Ildebrando Pizzetti, who also wrote the libretto himself after the Italian translation of T. S. Eliot's 1935 play Murder in the Cathedral. It premiered on 1 March 1958 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni.
Plot
At the centre of the opera is the 1170 murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury: four armed knights break through the cathedral's barricades and kill Becket despite the desperate attempts of clergy and the faithful to protect him.
Cultural significance
Pizzetti probably encountered Eliot's play around 1936 and used it to pursue his lifelong concern with a close fusion of word and music. Despite being performed only rarely since the composer's death, the opera remains regarded as his most popular stage work.