The Romanian composer George Enescu was one of the most fascinating and versatile musicians in the first half of the twentieth century. His only opera, Oedipe, was the object of his intermittent attention over some fifteen years and was eventually given its première at the Paris Opéra in 1936, when it won great success. Unlike the play by Sophocles, from which Enescu drew his inspiration, its first and last acts trace the story from the birth of Oedipus to his death, with the dramatic events at the heart of the tragedy in the central two acts. The scoring shows the greatest originality, while the musical language is unique to Enescu, with its shifting harmonies and thematic transformations.