ABSTRACT
George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s 2012 opera Written on Skin, based on the thirteenth-century razo of troubadour Guillem de Cabestanh, has the book as object at its centre. In the opera, the creation of histories is played out on in multiple ways, from the politics of bookmaking being a central tenet of the opera, to the framing of the plot through a twenty-first-century lens via the set design and framing device of angels. This chapter explores how Written on Skin destabilises ideas about history, drawing attention to the strangeness inherent in attempts to collapse the distance between past and present.
