Recorded at the UK premiere – a concert staging at the Barbican in London in 2012 that left a rather mixed impression – Gerald Barry’s operatic take on Oscar Wilde’s most famous play emerges as vividly on disc as it has subsequently done in the opera house. In the Barbican, the sheer size of the hall seemed to dilute the impact of Barry’s fabulously inventive score, with its machine-gun delivery of great swathes of text, ricocheting instrumental lines, and surreal references to Auld Lang Syne and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. On disc, all those can be enjoyed, the sheer virtuosity with which Barry puts it all together appreciated, and the expert performances by the singers and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Thomas Adès, marvelled at. The cast – with Barbara Hannigan as Cecily, Katalin Károlyi as Gwendolen, Peter Tantsits as Jack, and Alan Ewing, in what is I suppose the opposite of a trouser role, as Lady Bracknell – copes staggeringly well with the challenges Barry sets them.
