Page 435 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

4 June 2022

R E V I E W
Violet is the best new British opera in years

This mesmerising opera about the end of the world from Tom Coult and Alice Birch feels all too
familiar as we emerge from the pandemic
By Alexandra Coghlan

Full of mischief and wisdom, the show belongs to Anna Dennis’s Violet CREDIT: Marc Brenner
What happens when the world you know disappears overnight? Post pandemic we all have some
idea. But back in 2019 when composer Tom Coult and playwright Alice Birch (Anatomy of A
Suicide; Lady Macbeth) created Violet – an opera about loss and hope and the end of the world – it
was still fantasy. Thank goodness. Because without that innocence, Violet could never have been so
clear-eyed, so completely uncluttered by recent history. Fierce and funny, magical and precise, it’s
a dazzling piece – the best new British opera we’ve seen for some time.

Which is all the more striking when you realise that it’s also a first for both Coult and Birch: his
first opera score, her first libretto. Opera-making is a dark art. Great composers (Wagner,
Beethoven) and great writers (Auden, Forster) have stumbled in early attempts, and it’s rare to see
such complete assurance and alchemy between collaborators.

A small village is in crisis. Time is disappearing, at first just an hour, then more and more. Crops
are dying, food is running out, men are killing their cattle and wives. Everyone is terrified –