Inside The Handmaid’s Tale opera rehearsal room with ENO Artistic Director Annilese Miskimmon to hear all about the opera based on the book by Margaret Atwood and discuss why it’s such a significant work.

The opera tells the story of a Handmaid given the name Offred, one of the fertile women forced to reproduce with Commanders of the Republic. This thought-provoking work magnifies the issues of state control and the fragility of freedom, as Offred wrestles with the daily terror of her reality.

With Danish composer Ruders’s score, with a libretto by Paul Bentley, influenced by minimalism, medieval chanting and gospel music, the dissonant brutality of Gilead is viscerally depicted in the opera’s music itself.