Assassinio nella cattedrale is a 20th-century opera that definitely deserves to be rediscovered. Set in gothic Canterbury, it focuses on the doubts and moral dilemmas that are preying on the conscience of an archbishop in disagreement with the king. To preserve his ideological purity he will choose God over his sovereign, and will perish by martyrdom.

Based on T. S. Eliot’s play “Murder in the Cathedral”, the mystic and evocative atmosphere is rendered by Ildebrando Pizzetti, then at the apex of his career.