The work is a co-commission and co-production with the Berliner Festspiele, Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Vienna Festival.

Although Henze announced in 2003 that L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe would be his last opera,[1] it became known during 2006[2] that in spite of serious illness, he was preparing a new opera based on the classical myth of Phaedra.

The libretto is by Christian Lehnert [de] and deals in an innovative way with the story of Phaedra, whose love for her stepson Hippolytus triggers catastrophe.

The first part of the opera tells this legend much as previously retold by Euripides, Racine and Sarah Kane.

The second, composed after Henze's collapse and two-month coma, is set in Nemi, near Henze's home in Italy, and the location of the ancient cult and priesthood of Virbius (which inspired Sir James Frazer to write The Golden Bough).

As the struggles of the goddesses and the identity of Hippolyt become gradually more and more abstract and remote, the wholeness of nature reasserts itself, and the Minotaur, in Henze's words, "proclaims a kind of freedom, the spring comes... into the world and the woods.

"[6] The first production was designed by the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and produced by Peter Mussbach [de].

The role of Hippolytus was sung by John Mark Ainsley (tenor), that of Phaedra by Maria Riccarda Wesseling (mezzo-soprano) and that of Aphrodite by Marlis Petersen (soprano).

The role of the goddess Artemis was sung by the countertenor Axel Köhler, an interesting example both of Henze's fondness for and stylistic affinity with Baroque conventions (in this case that of the travesti) and of his blissfully unconventional approach to gender and sexuality (as its name implies, the tradition of the breeches role is for a woman to play the part of a man).

The concept of a 'concert opera' inspired Eliasson (in his first work for the operatic stage), Mussbach and Skodzig to seek to develop 'a new kind of theatrical evening, reflecting and profoundly questioning the actualities of our way of looking at the world'.

The Snare – Phaedra writes to Theseus, falsely accusing Hippolyt of raping her.

The sea-god made the revived Minotaur rise from the sea and frighten the horses pulling Hippolyt's chariot.

She brings him back to life and locks him in a cage, giving him a new name: Virbius (Man-Twice).