Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde (1958) was arguably the first community opera with an environmental message. It explored the potential extinction of animal and human life, and since then environmentalism as a social issue has begun to emerge in community operas as a distinctive trope. This article examines some more recent examples produced in the UK, from The Split Goose Feather (1979) by Christopher Brown, to Timber! (1990) by Timothy Kraemer, to Russell Hepplewhite’s Till the Summer Comes Again (2012) inspired by Glyndebourne’s wind turbine. It concludes with some reflections on the questions that arise in relation to contemporary opera, the environment and sustainability – notably how the professional operatic world can respond to concerns about the environment, and what steps are necessary to ensure the sustainability of opera for the future.
