Page 518 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

on further bathos. The vocal writing, as in so much contemporary opera, is insensitive to verbal
nuance but insists on floridity – a demand which soprano Anna Dennis handles with unflagging
brilliance. Yet how much more effective her supposed growth might be if the word-setting were
more varied, and not over the top from the start.

Pace in general is a problem: in short, there doesn’t seem to be any, which is odd when you’re
heading towards extinction. Coult can try and inject rhythmic variety into the elegiac tone, and
varies the colours – his instrumentation can be fascinating, especially at the spectral end of the
scale, and is brilliantly realized by the London Sinfonietta under Andrew Gourlay – but this isn’t
music theatre as we know it, only more or less volume in a sequence that generates no dramatic
tension at all. I was briefly gripped when Violet, having done something (built a boat), delivers her
final scene with maid Laura (Frances Gregory, as good as she can be), and Andrew MacKenzie
Wicks’ ultimate monologue on time, fighting against the text’s banality, pulls you in before a sub-
Lynchian video finale reinforces how this misconceived doominess was never going to end
interestingly.