An Opera in two acts composed by Michael Nyman with libretto by Michael Hastings. The generously packaged, slip-cased 2-CD set contains a full colour 44-page booklet with the complete libretto. The tenth release on MN Records, and the second opera recording for the label, Love Counts is a love story between the unlikeliest of couples: Avril, a lecturer in mathematics at a major college who has divorced a man who physically abused her, and Patsy, a middle-weight fighter at the end of his career who cannot read or recognise numbers. Michael Nyman uses Riemenschneider's collection of 371 Bach chorale harmonisations to help Patsy find his voice – they are harmonically fragmented, sped up, slowed down, overlaid with themselves. Just as Dr P, the Alzheimer's suffering protagonist of Nyman's The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, has 'his' Schumann, so, in Love Counts, Patsy, a parallel sufferer, has 'his' Bach. Award-winning writer Michael Hastings had previously worked with Nyman on the libretto for the opera Man and Boy: Dada, also available on MN Records. Love Counts was commissioned by the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlesruhe, Germany and first performed there on 12 March 2005, directed by Robert Tannenbaum. This is a recording of the critically-acclaimed Almeida Theatre production of Love Counts where it was performed in July 2006, designed by Peter McKintosh and directed by Lindsay Posner. Personnel: Helen Williams (soprano), Andrew Slater (bass-baritone), The Michael Nyman Band, Paul McGrath (conductor)