[1][2][3] Prospero's Rooms had its world premiere on April 17, 2013 at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, with conductor Alan Gilbert leading the New York Philharmonic; the UK premiere took place at the Barbican Centre in London on April 24, 2015 with Michal Nesterowicz conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with the performance being broadcast live on BBC Radio 3's Radio 3 Live in Concert program.
On the inception and composition of the work, Rouse wrote in the score program notes:In the days when I would have still contemplated composing an opera, my preferred source was Edgar Allan Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death.'
[1] Reviewing the world premiere, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim of The New York Times praised Prospero's Rooms, saying, "In Mr. Rouse’s atmospheric work, the story is told with dreamlike speed — 10 minutes from the cadaverous contrabassoon line that opens over quiet string rumblings to the final terrifying crash.
Poe’s ball takes place in a sequence of monochrome rooms and the music had a strong sense of motion and spaces being entered and left behind, as well as colors that sometimes seemed eerily disembodied from the instruments that produced them.
"[5] George Hall of The Guardian called the work "unmemorable," but nevertheless complimented it as "a lively, if frenetic, piece of orchestral writing.