Punch And Judy
London

Whether crafty opportunism or not, the second element in English National Opera's short season of contemporary opera at the Young Vic neatly complements the Royal Opera's premiere of The Minotaur. Punch And Judy was Harrison Birtwistle's first opera, an abrasive retelling of the old English puppet show story which apparently scandalised the Aldeburgh festival audience when it was first seen there in 1968. Birtwistle and his librettist Stephen Pruslin called their work a "tragical comedy or comical tragedy" and it has lost none of its visceral power. Through the puppet characters, human weaknesses are exaggerated and caricatured through Birtwistle's uncompromising score: on one level it's a number opera, a mosaic of self-contained musical forms, like a work by Handel or Mozart; on another it is a dark, ironic commentary on composing an opera, postmodern before the term was invented.

· Young Vic, SE1, Sat 19 to Apr 27