John La Bouchardière who has taken these generalised, non-narrative musical expressions of love and tried to match them to a plot of his own devising. The whole thing is set mostly in a restaurant with various couples arguing, having affairs, and making up. The glorious music is sung with conviction, though I Fagiolini do have one or two tuning problems.

The first thing to say about this brilliant film is that it is extremely well sung. The second thing is that you need to be in pretty good emotional shape in order to enjoy, or perhaps I should say survive, the experience of watching it. What John Le Bouchardière has done is to use Monteverdi's Fourth Book of Madrigals as the vehicle for tracing the break-up in the relationships of six couples.

Music-theatre hit of the decade … bleak but brilliant