Edward Rushton's first opera, The Young Man with the Carnation, was staged by Almeida Opera two years ago. It signalled that Rushton, born in 1972, was definitely a composer to watch, one with a real gift for musical imagery, even if at that stage his dramatic instincts were not quite honed. His new chamber opera, staged by John Fulljames for the Opera Group and given just a single performance in Cheltenham, shows how far he has advanced since then. Birds. Barks. Bones, with a libretto by Dagny Gioulami, is a marvellous piece, original in structure, packed with deft ensemble writing and expressive vocal lines, and both funny and moving.
The three elements in this "Trojan trilogy" are independent yet interdependent; there are no direct narrative or obvious musical connections between them, though Odysseus and the Trojan war are constant presences. The first part, Philoctetes, is a reworking of the Sophocles play in which the archer, wounded and bitter, is tricked by Odysseus into giving up the bow of Heracles. Barks lasts barely five minutes, and depicts Odysseus's dog waiting for his master's return so he can die in peace, while Linen from Smyrna takes place at the hero's wake, with his wife, Penelope, and other women, Kalypso, Nausikaa and Circe, still vying for his favours over the corpse.
It is an archetypal classical Greek sequence - a tragedy and a comedy separated by a brief satyr play - yet each is so different in Rushton's treatment that there is no sense of contrivance. He can generate tremendous expressive power from a single instrumental line, and much of the tension in Philoctetes derives from the use of spare accompaniments to underscore the dramatic tension. Barks is a piece for the whole company, a choral tour de force introduced by diaphanous string textures, while Linen from Smyrna is the most obviously operatic, though with its over-the-top arias and ensembles very subversively so.
It is all economically presented by Fulljames and conductor Gerry Cornelius. The casts - including Owen Gilhooly as Philoctetes, Julian Tovey an overweening Odysseus, Louise Mott a frowsty Penelope and Donna Bateman a vampish Kalypso - are outstanding too. A triumph for all concerned.
· At the Linbury Studio, London WC2, on July 26 and 27. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
