[Purves] expresses a brooding pride and menace that makes your skin crawl. [Hannigan] makes an electrifying transformation from doe-like submissiveness to sexual predator, and the powerfully strange countertenor of Bejun Mehta...is ideally contrasted to these two...Even more riveting than the singing is the playing of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra...On every level it’s masterly.

The performance has nervous energy in abundance...the dark spirit of the drama is impressively sustained throughout, with the five singers giving their all and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra relishing the music’s startlingly distinctive range of colours and textures.

one of the most (more pessimistically: one of the only) unforgettable operas of the last decade or two, a work that seems both old-fashioned and fresh. Timeless, more like it. With a virtuosic cast and its composer leading a committed orchestral reading, it takes its rightful place among the classics.

The vocal lines are highly singable, and Christopher Purves’s Protector anchors the drama with a subtle baritone. Bejun Mehta and Barbara Hannigan relish the erotic confrontations of the Boy and Agnès, her soprano soaring fearlessly. Superb diction throughout.