IT MIGHT sound like a tagline for an upmarket tattoo studio but “Written on Skin” is in fact the title of a new British opera composed by George Benjamin and written by Martin Crimp. Set in medieval Provence, a young wife’s discovery of the arts of drawing and writing leads to her psychological and sexual awakening. At the beginning of the work she is a paragon of meek and mild femininity, referred to by her husband as his “property” and prized above all for her obedience. By the end she has jumped to her death in an act of violent defiance. Currently playing at the Royal Opera House (ROH) in London, the opera is in many ways a traditional example of the genre, and not simply because the prima donna dies at the end. The drama combines highfalutin with high-octane, providing as much edge-of-the-seat excitement as food for leisurely contemplation. In Mr Crimp’s hands the story, taken from a gory medieval romance in which a cuckolded nobleman forces his wife to eat the heart of her murdered lover, becomes a troubling philosophical parable. Mr Benjamin’s delicately scored but uncompromisingly driven music provides extraordinary energy and emotional directness, yet also creates shimmering aural sculptures which challenge and delight the senses.

The opera was hailed as a modern masterpiece following its premiere last July at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Directed by Katie Mitchell, this intelligent and visually arresting production has since played to packed houses in Toulouse, Amsterdam and now London. The small cast gives an excellent performance, led by Barbara Hannigan, a Canadian soprano, as Agnes and Christopher Purves, a British baritone, as her husband (pictured above).

A year ago another new opera, “Miss Fortune” by Judith Weir, played on the main stage at the ROH but failed to live up to its name and flopped. Given the amount of planning and investment necessary for a major new work, and the fact that few new works succeed beyond an initial honeymoon period, several voices declared that opera houses should stick to the tried and tested repertoire. But “Written on Skin” has silenced such voices with unanimous praise from critics and audiences alike. Its success also comes on the back of the company‘s sell-out revival, earlier this season, of another British opera: Harrison Birtwistle’s “The Minotaur”, first performed in 2008.

A new pricing policy for more challenging operas has certainly helped to encourage attendance—tickets for contemporary and modern works can cost up to two thirds less than tickets for the more established repertoire. But the creative success of these new productions provides grounds for optimism in British opera too. Kasper Holten, the ROH’s artistic director since 2011, has already signalled a renewed commitment to new work on the house’s main stage, including a reworking of Luis Buñuel's film “The Exterminating Angel” by the British composer Tom Adès for 2017 and future projects from foreign composers, such as Kaija Saariaho from Finland and Unsuk Chin from South Korea. Contemporary works continue to flourish on the house’s smaller second stage, with the stage premiere of Gerald Barry’s anarchic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” eagerly anticipated later this year.

Elsewhere in London, the English National Opera is preparing the world premiere next month of “Sunken Garden”, by Michel van der Aa, a Dutch composer whose high-tech conception of the art form has won him many admirers. Another commission is also nearing completion: a treatment of Sophocles’s Theban plays by Julian Anderson, a highly regarded British composer whose orchestral work “The Discovery of Heaven” won a prestigious South Bank Award last week. The trend is by no means isolated in London; the Welsh National Opera has the UK stage premiere of the late Jonathan Harvey’s ambitious “Wagner Dream” coming in June, followed by a new opera based on J.M. Barrie’s children’s classic, “Peter Pan”, composed by Richard Ayres and written by the poet Lavinia Greenlaw, scheduled for 2015.

The rude health of contemporary British opera might seem surprising. Opera houses have long thrived by concentrating on a small repertoire of canonical works, most by European composers from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and many have all but turned their backs on the risky business of staging new work. But without a foothold in contemporary culture, any art form will eventually perish. This current glut of excellent new British work promises that there is new life in this centuries-old art form.

"Written on Skin" is at the Royal Opera House in London until March 22nd, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence from May 28th to 31st and the Vienna Festival from June 14th to 17th 2013

