‘Surely this is not only the best treatment of Oscar Wilde since Strauss’s Salome, but also one of the few absolutely essential operas of the last 20 years. Gerald Barry’s acerbic, brass-and-wind dominated Ernest brings out the violence behind the epigrams – not as a subtext but as screaming, explicit expressionism, fully backed up by score injuctions.’ David Nice
Barry
The Importance of Being Ernest
Barbara Hannigan, Katalin Károlyi, Hilary Summers, Peter Tantsits, Alan Ewing, Joshua Bloom, Benjamin Bevan, Joshua Hart; Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Thomas Adès
NMC D 197
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