Midsummer Nights

In 2009, the Glyndebourne Festival of Opera reaches its 75th year. In commemoration of this event, Jeanette Winterson has brought together some of the best loved and most critically acclaimed authors writing today to pen stories inspired by opera. A foreword from Ralph Fiennes and an introduction by Jeanette Winterson are followed by: Alexander McCall Smith on Cosi Fan Tutte; Ali Smith on Fidelio; Andrew Motion on Peter Grimes; Andrew O'Hagan on Eugene Onegin; Ann Enright on Rusalka;; Colm Toibin on Pearl Fishers; Jackie Kay on The Makropulos Case; Joanna Trollope on L'Elisir d'Amore; John Mortimer on Cosi Fan Tutte; Julie Myerson on The Crowning of Poppaea; Kate Atkinson on La Traviata; Kate Mosse on Pelleas et Melisande; Lynne Truss on The Turn of the Screw; Marina Warner on Dido and Aeneas; Posy Simmonds double page of 'Glyndebourne Midsummer Night'; Ruth Rendell on Theodora; Sebastian Barry on Natoma; Toby Litt on Don Giovanni.

Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel. Since then she has written eight other novels, including The Passion and been published in 32 countries, as well as adapting her work for TV, film and stage. She lives in Gloucestershire and London.