A chilling masterpiece

Sometimes music speaks not only to your mind and heart, but grabs at your very viscera in the most primal way imaginable. Such was the experience of last night’s world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur at the Royal Opera.

Demanding and disturbing, the overture, played against the backdrop of dark and menacing waves, warned us of darkness to come. This was no idle threat, either. Rape, massacre and the consumption of the Minotaur’s half-dead sacrificial victims, the Innocents, by the greedy Keres, vulture-like harpies: all were to follow.

The mission of Theseus to enter the Cretan labyrinth, slay the beast and whisk Ariadne back to Athens provides the opera with its narrative framework. Christine Rice’s Ariadne was especially compelling: a study in both manipulation and terror.

But the night belonged to John Tomlinson, wearing a costume that closely resembled a cage and therefore deftly symbolised the pathos of the beast’s captivity as well as his savagery.