Performer: Richard Baker

Emily Howard's new opera, an Aldeburgh Festival commission, takes an ambitiously modernist approach to a dystopian story of loneliness: a tough, but thought-provoking work. 

Philip Venables' 4.48 Psychosis is the first musical adaptation of the eponymous play by Sarah Kane, which is the culmination of a three-year programme run jointly by the Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

A new collaboration between Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and The Royal Opera produced mixed results: while Francisco Coll's Café Kafka was a characterful piece which combined humour with darker undertones, Elspeth Brooke's The Commission proved less successful.

With its small raised platform and steeply seated audience, the Linbury Studio Theatre was an auspicious venue for the English Touring Opera’s production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ chamber opera The Lighthouse (1979). The trelliswork of metal bars encircling the stalls and the bleak lighting effects gave this performance a befittingly industrial air.