Trigger warning. George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, those diabolically accomplished talents who gave opera lovers the willies with their Pied Piper reboot Into the Little Hill and the revenge cannibalism of Written On Skin, are back with the history of Edward II. Immortalized on the Elizabethan stage by Christopher Marlowe, the unfortunate monarch is remembered chiefly for his dalliance with a low-born male favorite, which outraged the nobles. For that, and for his gruesome end at the hands of an executioner who raped him with a red-hot iron poker, so as to leave no mark of murder. —M.G.