After ruminating on it for almost 15 years, Mr Fowles turned in a work that was full of Shakespearean and Homeric allusion, the story of an English teacher in Greece who falls under the sway of a fabulously wealthy magician, the Magus of the title, and his parallel fantasy universe.

ECONOMIST: John Fowles

Most moving are the gentle faces of the African Magus and his attendant, the only two figures who look directly at the viewer in the c. 1514 "Adoration of the Kings" from the workshop of the Netherlandish master Gerard David.

WSJ: Less Familiar Faces | Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe | Princeton University Art Museum | By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

In no obvious sense an opera, it's a sense-of-nation-defining pageant based on the career of the Tudor-era magus, necromancer and astrologer.

WSJ: England's Opera Spectaculars