BBC Radio 3

The Royal Opera House's 2008-2009 season featured 23 operas, in 15 of them the deaths of women was the main focus of the plot. Be it suicide, murder, asphyxiation, drowning, execution, leaping into an avalanche or even singing themselves to death, a significant proportion of female characters will have come to a sticky end by the time the curtain falls. Journalist and opera fanatic Martin Kettle asks the question, why do so many women die in opera? He finds some surprising answers along the way.

included in Caz Graham's Pick of the Week, BBC Radio 4