Page 444 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

6 June 2022

FIRST NIGHT | OPERA
Violet review — I have a lot of time

for this new opera

Snape Maltings, Suffolk

Richard Morrison

Opera

Anna Dennis as Violet, who finds independence in impending doom in Tom Coult and Alice Birch’s opera

★★★★☆

In every sense time passes quickly in Violet, the new opera opening this year’s Aldeburgh

Festival. The piece (a co-production with Music Theatre Wales) is just 85 minutes long, and it

chronicles a succession of 24 days in which each day is an hour shorter than the one before it.
So the four characters (and, you gather, the rest of the world) are not only being shaken out of

their “clockwork” routines, they are facing total oblivion on day 24.