The libretti of the Scottish composer Judith Weir, who writes her own, reflect a literary taste for the exotic. Her highly economical, cunningly crafted operas include adaptions of an Old Norse saga from 11th-century Iceland, Scottish folk tales, the Renaissance epic La Gerusalemme Liberata, and—looking eastward to China—the Yuan-dynasty revenge thriller The Orphan of Zhao. Based on a dark, exceedingly puzzling tale by the arch Romantic Ludwig Tieck, the 70-minute Blond Eckbert has a cast of just four plus a dog we don’t hear from. At one level, the whole story unspools from Waldeinsamkeit, or loneliness in the woods, a concept for which Tieck coined the word and other Romantics found resonant uses. But the into-the-woods revelations of incest, neglect, theft, and murder leave the Brothers Grimm (and Stephen Sondheim) in the dust. A new production opens this year’s edition of the Aldeburgh Festival, which Benjamin Britten founded in 1948. One performance only, but Weir is one of the season’s featured artists, and lots more of her music is threaded through other programs. Blink and you’ll miss King Harald’s Saga—that’s the Old Norse opera. Written for soprano a cappella, it’s in three acts and runs all of 10 minutes. —Matthew Gurewitsch