Dusapin - Antigone (Paris, 2025)

Pascal Dusapin - Antigone

Philharmonie de Paris, 2025

Klaus Mäkelä, Netia Jones, Christel Loetzsch, Anna Prohaska, Tómas Tómasson, Jarrett Ott, Thomas Atkins, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Serge Kakudji, Natalia Cellier, Cosma Moïssakis

Philharmonie Live streaming - October 2025

The themes and presentation of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus remain just as important a foundation for opera as it does for contemporary theatre. Even more so in opera which was originally conceived in the belief that Greek drama was sung. Medea, Orpheus, Elektra, and Oedipus have inspired some of the greatest works of opera from early baroque to modern times, which is not surprising, as the subjects and treatments are inherently dynamic and dramatic in their grappling with always relevant human and moral questions. Filled with death and destruction on a cataclysmic scale, the tragedies present dark tales about the price to be paid for contravention of moral laws and defiance of the gods, but there is more than one kind of god and the dramas still have something important and vital to tell us today about humanity and moral imperatives today. Especially today in our troubled times, when the rule of law is in danger of being disregarded, when what should be unthinkable atrocities are committed and permitted before our eyes.

It's in these febrile and dangerous times that Pascal Dusapin produces his latest work based on Sophocles' Antigone. Dealing with one woman's stand against injustice and belief in a higher law than that of corrupt or foolish rulers, it's a timely reflection on the horrors that we are seeing around us today and the potential consequences for us all if authoritarianism is not resisted - and even if it is. Created for the Philharmonie in Paris, Dusapin presents the work as an "opératorio", partly in concession to it being performed in the Grande salle Pierre Boulez concert hall rather than on an opera stage, but more to give it the concentrated force that the work merits.

Seen as a typically moral question of holding to individual beliefs or divine order above those of man-made laws of the state and resorting to activism when they are wrongfully employed, the subject of Antigone however raises many complex questions and ambiguities when viewed in a modern light. This is another reason why Dusapin chooses to work with Friedrich Hölderlin's 1804 German translation of the work, a reduction to a concentrated form of text. As an 'Opératorio in Five Acts', reduced to an hour and a half performance, the composer uses his always powerful musical expression to provide weight and subtext to explore the ambiguity within that version, and Dusapin's score for his Antigone indeed imbues the work with all the force and meaning that its subject merits.

The essence of the drama is retained and remains simple enough in outline, where as a background to what unfolds in Antigone, Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of Oedipus and brothers to Antigone and Ismene, have both been killed in a dispute over the rule of the city of Thebes. As a punishment for having gathered an army to march against the great city, Creon, their uncle and now ruler of Thebes (and uncle of Antigone) refuses a burial for Polynices, denying even any funeral rites to be said over his body. Antigone is horrified by the order, as much from human decency as for the fact that Polynices was her brother and, against the advice of her sister Ismene, defies Creon's proclamation and performs a burial rite, throwing soil and praying for her fallen brother where he lays.

The drama of Antigone is certainly is adaptable to the times and political events. I recall the segment 'The Postponed Antigone' by Volker Schlöndorff from a script by Heinrich Böll in the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst, where the public TV executives pull a filmed theatre performance of Antigone from the schedules at a time of high tensions in Germany around the activities of the RAF/Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. That is an indication of the potential of the original work to inspire activism, while at the same time showing how the authorities can control and prevent such controversial views from being aired - but Dusapin's choice of Hölderlin's translation and his own efforts to take a neutral position calculatedly avoid any contemporary political interpretation of the work.

In terms of what is the just and moral action to take, the message of Antigone's defiance and her stance in standing up for what she believes is right may seem fairly self-evidently and difficult to challenge, but as is often the case in Greek drama, all actions - even doing what seems to be the right and just thing in the circumstances - can have unintended consequences that reverberate down the line. You could even see the fate of the children of the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta as being cursed by the time of Seven against Thebes and Antigone. In Antigone itself, Antigone's actions have immediate consequences for her when she is condemned to death, takes her own life and a series of other deaths follow in her wake.

So there is a lot to take in and consider in Antigone, and you have to say, based on the premiere performances of the work in October 2025 at the Philharmonie de Paris, Dusapin handles the subject impressively, finding the opposing contrasting forces within the drama and letting them assert their own power without imposing any heavy-handed contemporary reading on the work. More than Antigone, who is single minded and certain of her position - and who inevitably cuts an impressive figure as performed here by mezzo-soprano Christel Loetzsch - Creon has perhaps the more decisive and conflicted role. He knows a ruler cannot appear weak, that Antigone represents a challenge to his authority, but even knowing what will follow when the soothsayer Tiresias makes an appearance, he is unable to do anything to prevent the tragedy that is unfolding.

Dusapin obviously depicts this clash between Antigone and Creon in all its intensity, but despite the concentrated focus of this version, the other conflicts and views are all similarly well expressed and have a vital role to play in the overall balance of the drama, as well as introducing other perspectives that the individual viewer can relate to without being swayed to take one side or another. Ismene's advice to her sister to keep a lower profile and know their place as women, while Antigone wants to shout 'injustice!' from the rooftops introduces the inequality of women's views; Creon's son Haemon brings love into the equation, for Antigone, as well as between father and son. Fraternal love is there too of course in Antigone's conducting an unauthorised dignified burial of sorts for Polynices. Moral questions are agonised over, there are questions of self-sacrifice, honour and respect, both sides believing they have authority, creating a conflict the wisdom of age and holding to old ways over youthful impetuousness and new beliefs.

The dominant tone of the work however is one of unfolding tragedy and that is reflected in the orchestration of low dark sustained notes and lines on strings and brass. At times - as in Dusapin's more recent operas Macbeth Underworld (2019) and Penthesilea (2015) - there are occasional Reimann-like blasts from a large orchestra, although without quite the same sustained battery of seismic eruptions. The anger of Creon in pronouncement of the fate of Polynices is accompanied by a fusillade of rattling violent percussion crashes followed by ominous, rumbling mournful music. It's a musical language more in the line of Richard Strauss' Salome by way of Wagner, and under the direction of conductor Klaus Mäkelä it's every bit as expressive, operatic and dramatically visceral as that implies. Harp, bells and flute can stir up just as much menace and even while Creon brays out his threats, the music can hint at his words being empty; of compassion, of authority perhaps, moral and regal.

Directed by Netia Jones, who sees it as a kind of performance-installation for the concert hall of the Grande salle Pierre Boulez at the Philharmonie in Paris. the Antigone opératorio is nonetheless also fully operatic in performance. Jones can tend towards maximalism in her productions, but here settles for a monochrome minimalist set design that lets the singers take centre stage - figuratively speaking. The majority of the stage is taken up by tall imposing grey-white freestanding monolithic pillars (can it be a monolith if there is more than one?) which are reactive to lighting and effects created by Lightmap, projecting shadows, abstract markings, lines, swirling mists, clouds and gathering darkness, leaving only a corner for an array of microphone stands which are not used for oratorio purposes, but pleas and proclamations. Two video screens occasionally show time-delayed overlaid distorted images of the singers adding to the mood of a distorted reality, while the appearance of Tiresias seeing an enhanced reality wearing a VR-type headset is a good touch. The direction of the video recording of the performance by the Philharmonie de Paris for ARTE Concert makes creative use of movement and angles to capture the drama.

The singing performances are exceptional, and a fully rounded range of voice types just add to the characterisation and the feel of this being fully operatic. It's certainly more declamatory by its very nature, less action-oriented, but deeply operatic in the presentation of the themes and the range of expression in the music and singing. Mezzo-soprano Christel Loetzsch sings Antigone with all the sense of a 'true believer' (whether of the will of Gods or of her own sense of moral certainty), but you can feel the deep emotional sense of loss at the tragedy of her brother's/brothers' fate. Soprano Anna Prohaska's timidity as Ismene can also be seen suggesting a more cautious response, a wiser one even. Creon is of course a bass, and Tómas Tómasson's performance makes you feel deeply involved in his predicament as one bad decision sets off a chain of horrific events. There are solid performances here to from baritone, Jarrett Ott (a Messenger), tenor Thomas Atkins (Haemon), bass Edwin Crossley-Mercer (Tiresias) and even an unearthly sounding counter-tenor Serge Kakudji appropriately as the Greek Chorus.

External links: Philharmonie de Paris, ARTE Concert

Dvořák - Rusalka (Dublin, 2026)

Antonín Dvořák - Rusalka

Irish National Opera, 2026

Fergus Sheil, Netia Jones, Jennifer Davis, Ryan Capozzo, Ante Jerkunica, Michelle DeYoung, Giselle Allen, Rachel Croash, Sarah Richmond, Alexandra Urquiola, Benjamin Russell, Andrew Masterson, 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 22nd March 2026

I guess it's probably expected that commentators on opera should have something to say about Timothée Chalamet's views on the value and relevance of opera and ballet today, but I don't think anyone who has actually been to see an opera needs to be convinced that it is far from a dead art form, and probably in far better shape than the movie industry at the moment, certainly in terms of artistic standards and growing audiences. Every new production of an opera - even one that is centuries old - brings out something new, touches on modern day concerns, adds to our understanding of what it means to be human, have feelings and relate to the world around us. And when you have a creative team like Fergus Sheil and Netia Jones working on a production like the Irish National Opera's Rusalka... well, the mind truly is expanded.

All fairy-tales tend to have a moral or present a cautionary tale that touches on deep universal themes and Rusalka's are not difficult to identify, although it's a story that has taken on many different forms over the years in various European guises such as Undine, Melusine, Oceane and The Little Mermaid. Not only does each version or adaptation have its own take on the subject, the universality of the theme is one that each person can relate to from their own experience. As an opera Dvořák's Rusalka is perhaps richer than most, the musical score inviting many ways to interpret its meaning and draw out new ideas. Not all of them need to be as ambitiously transgressive as Martin Kušej's 2010 Bavarian State Opera production or Stefan Herheim's at La Monnaie in 2012, but this particular opera seems to invite imaginative and engaging responses in its productions.

We certainly get that in the extraordinary visual feast created by Netia Jones for the Irish National Opera's 2026 production. Jones might not have any unusual or original take on the subject - opinions will differ on that obviously depending on what expectations you bring with you to the theatre - but instead finds another way to approach and draw out the themes, seeking to make them less magically 'fairy-tale' and more rooted in reality. Being rooted in reality doesn't mean that it has to adhere to naturalistic imagery or a straightforward narrative line either, but rather she presents it in abstract terms that connect with the work's underlying sentiments. The INO production is definitely very much in the abstract and yet it does invite engagement, although there were certainly those around me in the audience who seemed to be less willing to engage with those ideas.

Despite the extravagant sets, creative lighting and stunning projection effects that I've seen Jones produce before (Philip Glass's Orphée and Brian Irvine's Least Like the Other), the INO production bases the story in simple but more familiar recognisable locations that reflect the underlying purpose of the work, if not exactly in any naturalistic fashion. Rusalka is less about being a mermaid who wants to become human than in essence being a coming-of-age story. The first scene in Act I then envisions the water nymphs as children in school uniforms, the watery element suggested by a stage-spanning network of pipes that they wrap themselves around like in a playground, monitored by the plumber/janitor Vodník. He's not so much a sinister water goblin than a man who speaks with the wisdom of age and the experience of disappointment, warning the girls not to dream of growing up too soon.

Rusalka of course refuses to listen and Jones chooses to depict her transformation through the witch Ježibaba as a surgeon employing plastic surgery so that Rusalka can fit into the glamour of the 'grown up' world that she is enchanted by (Vodník taking every opportunity to tell us and Rusalka that we should have listened to his warning). In one of the many extravagant scenes in the production (just to mention in passing the remarkable visuals of the moon in eclipse for the 'Song to the Moon' in Act I, the 3D-like projections for the scene in the forest and the impressive kitchen - all of them suitably scaled-up for the beauty and glamour of the world seen through the eyes of Rusalka), the dances that take place on a chess board reflect the young woman's inability to comprehend the sophisticated social interactions and moves that the Prince, the Foreign Princess and the other guests are able to navigate and control more easily. It's made perfectly clear that Rusalka is not ready for and does not belong to this world.

Aside from presenting jaw-dropping visuals - Netia Jones acting as director, set & costume designer and even the creation of the superb video projections - the production succeeds in establishing the right mood for each scene, allowing the drama and characters to play out within that without introducing any extraneous elements or eccentric touches. It places you within a magical world - it places you in Dvořák's magical musical world - enthralled, not feeling the need to seek to interpret what the director is trying to tell you. If you are familiar with the tale and wish to do so, you can carry over thoughts, impressions and ideas from other productions, each revealing a new facet, or you can relate it to your own impressions and experience. There is certainly the possibility of seeing the opera not only reflecting Rusalka's loss of innocence, but also the rapidly changing modern world itself being a great deal more complicated for a young person to navigate.

Essentially that's at the heart of what the work is about, or at least one main theme, and that's what came across here. It's perhaps most pointedly made in the 'plastic surgery' scene, showing Rusalka rejecting the purity of her nature and the purity of nature, for an artificial and superficial glamour world that doesn't make any sense or offer any true value. It's even reflected in the character of the Prince, who is too often presented in a superficial way, the lure by which Rusalka is drawn away from her true self and finds the truth of human nature in deceit and betrayal. In this production - perhaps something to do with the singing of Ryan Capozzo, perhaps the nostalgic tug of the score under Fergus Sheil - the prince has a more human role to play; a counterpart to Rusalka's desire to leave behind her childhood, his desire for Rusalka is an attraction to and longing for the beauty of pure innocence, but a stark warning that once lost it is impossible to regain.

The singing performances are of course key to keeping you engaged with what each of the characters are living through, and with Jennifer Davis you are with Rusalka unwaveringly all the way. The opera was sung impressively in the original Czech which is very much a part of the character and tone of the work (Davis becoming something of an Irish Dvořák specialist having sung in Armida in Wexford in 2022), but the direction plays an equally important part in the human expression of the characters. Both aspects were managed brilliantly not just by Davis but, as indicated above, allowing Ryan Capozzo to let you see another side to the Prince. Giselle Allen even lets you sympathise to an extent with the Foreign Princess - again too often merely a cipher - or at least understand where she is coming from. Sure, she has a mercenary side - a necessary survival quality in this grown-up world, but she shows some self-respect in having little time for the Prince and his equivocations - get with the programme or go to hell, she literally tells him. Likewise, the excellent Ante Jerkunica overcame the rather repetitive admonitions of Vodník to add meaning and poignancy to each utterance as the inevitability of the tragedy unfolded.

Just as vital to keeping you engaged rather than puzzled is the musical interpretation under Fergus Sheil. Rusalka has the potential to be a little bombastic if its romantic sweeps are not handled with delicacy. No mean feat reining in an orchestra of this scale, but Sheil is right at home here with his ability to marshal the vast orchestral forces for this work and gets all the moods, pace and dynamic right for this production. It's gushily romantic in places, robustly Wagnerian in others, sensitive and moody where it needs to be, hitting those punchy crescendos in the right places, working with the delivery of the singers and the visuals to achieve maximum impact. When you have such beautiful music to 'illustrate' those deep emotions, feelings and experiences, it's impossible not to be swept along. I'm sure even Timothée would have been impressed.

External links: Irish National Opera

Irvine - Least Like the Other (Dublin, 2021)

Brian Irvine & Netia Jones - Least Like the Other

Irish National Opera, 2021

Fergus Sheil, Netia Jones, Amy Ní Fhearraigh, Stephanie Dufresne, Ronan Leahy, Aoife Spillane-Hinks

O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin - 17 September 2021

One thing you could be sure of in an opera by Brian Irvine was that was never going to be anything conventional about it. I've seen the Belfast composer's work performed in a number of ways, in orchestral commissions for the BBC and Ulster Orchestra, in jazz improvisations with his own ensemble and his uncategorisable thrash classical improvisation work 13 Vices with Jennifer Walshe. A short opera piece that he did as part of a NI Opera Shorts commission in 2012 might have suggested the direction of his first full length opera, but the title Least Like the Other seems to apply to just as much to Brian Irvine as the subject of his new opera.

If however there is anyone in contemporary music that Irvine can be compared to, it's maybe Gerald Barry. There same sense of adventure, of a drama delivered at a furious pace, a determination not to accept limitations or conventions, but whereas Barry can appear frivolous - when in fact his operas are highly complex, considered and perfectly attuned to the content - there is at least no sense that there is any room for frivolity in this opera's subject of Rosemary Kennedy. Rosemary is one of the lesser known siblings in the Kennedy family, but there is a good reason for that, and it's the choice of subject that undoubtedly brings out a wide variety of music and theatrical techniques from a composer delving into the dark unknown.

Perhaps the only way Least Like the Other: Searching for Rosemary Kennedy can be compared to classic opera is in the subject being that of a woman at odds with the world around her, at odds through no choice of her own with conventional social expectations in a largely - totally - patriarchal system. And, like the great Italian operas, the end is inevitably a tragic one. Born in 1918, Rosemary Kennedy, the third of the Kennedy siblings and sister of John F. Kennedy, could have been expected to have had a better start in life and more opportunities in the early to mid-twentieth century, but even aside from her being born with a disability, her path through life would still be curtailed and even destroyed by outside factors and social pressures.

Rosemary's troubles and certainly the most damaging factor on her life began at birth and even that can be attributed to the prevailing social and patriarchal order. The doctor was late to arrive at her birth, so her mother Rose was told to hold child in until he arrived otherwise he would not be paid for delivery. Due to a lack of oxygen in birth canal, Rosemary was born intellectually disabled. At the age of 23 she was subjected to a lobotomy, a new technique developed by neurologist Walter Freeman, as an attempted cure for her increasingly difficult behaviour. As a result she was left with capacity of a 2 year old, unable to walk or speak. She would spend the next 57 years of her life in a convent, removed from the Kennedy family.

As that also meant that she was removed from society, there is very little documentary record of Rosemary's life. Irvine's approach to this subject then is defined to some extent by the lack of source material, but it is certainly not limited by it. Working with theatre and opera director Netia Jones, the collaboration manages to bring the full horror of the story to life, as well as casting a critical eye on the kind of society that allows such things to take place. Least Like the Other turns out to be one of those works where music and theatre come together to create a narrative that goes beyond mere dramatic representation.

Essentially, it would be difficult in any case to have a glamorous soprano or mezzo-soprano represent Rosemary Kennedy. There is only one singing voice in the opera but the singer doesn't play Rosemary as much as provides a focal point for the pressures placed on her by the system, her family, religion, social expectations, and as a woman being generally submissive to the needs of men. She is almost a Not-Rosemary, the negation of the personality by those around her, by the social and family pressures around her, which are vividly played out in a number of scenes.

The opera might only have one singer, along with two actors and a voice-over narrator, but it also has music and theatre. The medical texts detailing lobotomy aims and procedures as a cure for the feeble minded and as a tool to control the criminality in the lower classes, the aggrandising speeches by Freeman and the autobiographical extracts from Rosemary's mother all convey the shock and horror for the primitive views on child rearing and treatment of mental illness, but Irvine's music and his writing for the voice - by turns insistent, elegiac and furious - allows you to feel it as it would be experienced by someone going through it; It's not the singer who is Rosemary Kennedy, it's the audience.

Although she lived a long life after the botched and crude surgery she was subjected to, it's at the point where Rosemary is completely deprived of having any control over her faculties or volition that Irvine and Jones close the story. Rummaging through the drawers of her life, everything is strewn across the stage as the music reaches a level of feverish activity, with strobe lighting, and the pre-recorded music by the INO orchestra spread across the theatre in 16-track surround. After that there we are left with an empty stage, with projections showing a body moving gently in a swimming pool to a slow piano accompaniment. Quiet, calm, empty, Rosemary - who loved to swim - is gone, at peace, a mind lost.

First presented at the Galway Festival in 2019 to great critical acclaim, further performances of Least Like the Other planned for 2020 were inevitably cancelled due to the pandemic and lockdown, so it was exciting to have the opportunity to see it in Dublin at the start of the new 2021/22 Irish National Opera season, even in the socially distanced seating of the O'Reilly Theatre. It didn't disappoint. The necessity of a pre-recorded score conducted by Fergus Sheil was used to the advantage of theatrical presentation, and was it played with such intensity, including improvising musicians, that it was virtually impossible to tell that it wasn't being played live.

Soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh, singing on alternate nights to mezzo-soprano Naomi Louise O'Connell, was certainly singing live and had the technical and emotional range to take on the incredibly challenging role of not just Rosemary, but essentially singing the whole 75 minute opera. That's to take nothing away from the importance of the actors, the delivery of the texts and the whole theatrical presentation in a striking and impressive set design created by director Netia Jones. With Irvine's score, this was a completely immersive and almost gut-wrenching experience, music, singing and dramatic presentation locking together as it should in opera, but even more importantly here with no defined characters and no straightforward dramatic narrative to create a complete, thoughtful and moving operatic experience.

Links: Irish National Opera

Glass - Orphée (London, 2019)

Philip Glass - Orphée

English National Opera, 2019

Geoffrey Paterson, Netia Jones, Nicholas Lester, Sarah Tynan, Jennifer France, Nicky Spence, Anthony Gregory, Clive Bayley, Simon Shibambu, Rachael Lloyd, William Morgan

The Coliseum, London - 18 November 2019 

The Orpheus myth has been an inspiration to artists and musicians for centuries and, as the recent English National Opera series that includes Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice and Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus - but going right back to Monteverdi's L'Orfeo - it has often provoked some of the most fascinating and enduring works in the history of opera. Whether you consider Philip Glass's Orphée based on Jean Cocteau's movie of the same name is worthy of being considered on the same level, there's no doubt that it's an equally fascinating approach to the same subject, haunting, unconventional and admonitory in its outlook

More than just be inspired by Cocteau's film, having worked on a series of three works based on Cocteau's extraordinary films (Orphée, La Belle et la Bête, Les Enfants Terribles), Glass is clearly attracted to Cocteau's sensibility, having studies in Paris in the 1950s with Nadia Boulanger, immersed in the same bohemian artistic milieu of the Paris left bank that inspired Cocteau. Director Netia Jones alludes to that in the opening scene of the ENO's production where the young poet Cégeste is killed in a road accident, having Glass, Boulanger and early formative dream-like companions from Einstein on the Beach sitting in the cafe where the young man has just caused a disturbance and a fight.

There's a good reason why Glass, Cocteau and many other artists and poets are attracted to the myth of Orpheus as, among other themes, it touches on some fundamental questions about the role of the artist. Glass uses the original text from Cocteau's 1950 film Orphée as libretto, and although Cocteau's contemporary updating of the story departs considerably from the original Orpheus myth - as does The Mask Of Orpheus - in essence the themes are the same, probing the idea of obsession, with questions of mortality and immortality through one's works, with the need to transgress boundaries in order to ask difficult questions and find the inspiration that leads one to be creative.

Glass's music and the visual representation of it on the Coliseum stage captures this alternate view of reality superbly. Glass's usual swirls and arpeggios combine with the projections and overlays of sequences from the Cocteau film, matching the fluid dream-like mood of the subsequent events as Orpheus is led by the Princess into the world through the mirror, a world where the dead can live again. Orpheus struggles to reconciles this vision of another reality with the practicalities and realities of everyday life as a poet and as a husband. His relationship with the Princess however allows him to co-exist in the world of the living and the dead as a poet, without really being conscious of where his gift and muse lies.

Orphée (1991) comes at an interesting stage in Glass's musical development. It's less radical perhaps than his early Portrait Trilogy operas (Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, Akhnaten), but still quite experimental and within the familiar Glass idiom of minimalist music of repetition and changing parts. As well as looking to the influence of Cocteau, Glass would also attempt to tap into the similar creative experimentation from other artists like David Bowie (Low Symphony, 1992) and Allen Ginsberg (Hydrogen Jukebox, 1993), with varying levels of success. All of these projects however would push class into exploring different responses and techniques from symphonic arrangements to chamber opera and song cycles, to even scoring La Belle et la Bête (1994) as a live opera over a real-time projection of the Cocteau movie.

The methods employed in Orphée are perfect for the work, using the full text of the film as a libretto, allowing the music and setting of the text to explore and delve further into Cocteau's creation and vision. It doesn't so much seek to deconstruct the work, as this is a work that requires no deconstruction, nor does it act as pure soundtrack accompaniment. The film casts its own spell and you don't want to lose or negate that, and all Glass does is enhance and present it successfully in a new medium where it can be explored creatively and remain fresh. In a way it renders it in three-dimensions, keeping it alive and open to reinterpretation through the medium of performance.

Musically there might not appear to be a great deal of room for interpretation within the familiar rhythms of Philip Glass's music, but as his recent work with Phelim McDermott and Improbable on Satyagraha and Akhnaten has shown (and to an extent on Tao of Glass), it can be expressive and collaborative in its live interaction with a sympathetic stage production. What it does inspire, certainly in the ENO production is an imaginative response from director Netia Jones and set designer Lizzie Clachan to a visual presentation that does succeed in bringing out another dimension to the film, indeed essentially transforming it into 3D through creative set designs. Frames and props move on simple rope-pulled trolleys, reflecting Cocteau's rudimentary but eerily effective techniques, with projections onto blocks of backdrops make the war-torn cityscapes of the Zone indeed three dimensional.

And of course the live performances add a further dimension and character to the work. Conductor Geoffrey Paterson brings out the musical richness that is on offer in Glass's score for chamber orchestra enhanced with vibraphone and electronic keyboard. Set to Cocteau's text, there is inevitably a lot of 'talky' singing (something that is not greatly improved by the ENO's continued pointless policy that translates the original French text into English with no subtitles, which instead of making it 'accessible' actually manages to render it less intelligible), but there are some beautiful passages of vocal writing that bring stand-out performances from Jennifer France as the Princess, Nicky Spence as Heurtebise, Sarah Tynan as Eurydice and Nicholas Lester as Orphée. Once again, the ENO turn out to be great advocates for the operas of Philip Glass.

Links: English National Opera