Benjamin Britten’s penultimate opera has had a patchy stage history over the years. The fact that it was originally written as a commission for BBC television might have put some off, yet Britten always conceived it as a potential theatre piece and musically it is structured to accommodate scene changes.  The original TV broadcast was in 1970 (back when operas could be seen as primetime) and Covent Garden staged it in 1973 but its outings since then have been sporadic.

An excellent Glyndebourne production in 1997 proved how effective it could be and in 2007, composer and Britten assistant David Matthews scored the piece for the typical Britten chamber orchestra such as he uses in Lucretia and Turn of the Screw. It is in this new version that the work receives its Australian premiere from the trailblazing Sydney Chamber Opera and anyone looking for the experience of potent, intimate music drama is recommended to get along to Carriageworks during its short run.

Imara Savage’s brooding production sets the whole affair in a contemporary compound, even starker that the grim interior of Carriageworks Bay 20 itself. It proves brilliantly atmospheric, overhung with the smoke...