Bliss

‘Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him...'

Peter Carey's sardonic novel Bliss charts the escapades and misadventures of Harry Joy, an advertising executive who, having survived a near-death experience, gets sucked into a Kafkaesque routine of increasing bizarreness.Is he really in hell? In a place where his wife is constantly unfaithful, his son is a drug dealer and his daughter offers sexual favours to pay for her narcotic needs?

Bliss is a much-anticipated new operatic collaboration with all the ingredients for excitement: a score by Brett Dean, surely one of the most innovative composers working today; an enthralling libretto by Amanda Holden; the directorial wit and sparkle of Neil Armfield; the virtuosity of Elgar Howarth and the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the electrifying stage presence of Peter Coleman-Wright. This opera is based on Peter Carey's remarkable novel.

Recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3

Bliss (the novel):

‘dazzling comic flair... quirky, irresistible' Time Out

‘funny, humane and at times profound' Literary Review

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