Boesman's music is quite lush and essentially tonal, although harmonically it suggests a good ear for later 20th-century musical grammar...The two live performances edited down here present a well-organised and comfortably recorded reading of the opera by the committed cast.

To this disconcerting drama the music gives extraordinary life, making the libretto seem both apt and palpably human. Remarkably for a score so rich, active and present, the music is precise and economical, supporting, carrying, even (one often feels) enabling the singing voices. And its marvellously flighted, frequently exquisite lyrical lines and great diversities of colour, texture and mood unfold at a pace that enables the listener to ‘join’ with and be carried by it.