The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko

Written between 2012 and 2020, and based on the experiences and murder of the former FSB officer and political activist Alexander Litvinenko, it was intended for a premiere at Grange Park Opera in 2020, but this was delayed by the COVID-19 epidemic until 2021.

Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian former FSB officer turned political dissident, who moved to London in 2000 and was murdered there in December 2006.

Bolton, who until his retirement in 2014 was a finance executive and an amateur composer, purchased in 2012 the opera rights to the biography by Litvinenko's wife Marina Death of a Dissident, after reading the book and meeting the author.

A variety of scenes include: Litvinenko and his wife reminiscing on their six years of life in Britain and his former work with the FSB; the siege of the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow in 2002, and the reporting of the event by the reporter Anna Politkovskaya; Litvinenko's experiences in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War; his refusal when ordered to assassinate the oligarch Boris Berezovsky; and his public exposure on Russian TV of state corruption.

In The Times, Richard Morrison's review was headed "A worthy tale of murder and mayhem - shame about the music", calling the score "drearily atonal" and complaining that Hesketh-Harvey's libretto was "stodgy".