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The week in classical: 4.48 Psychosis; London Symphony Orchestra/Rattle – review

Lyric Hammersmith; Barbican, London
The bleak brilliance of Philip Venables’s opera 4.48 Psychosis hits home. Plus, magnificent Mahler from the LSO and Simon Rattle

Shorn of joy, matted with despair, Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis shot to near classic status after its world premiere in 2016. It might have been a damp squib on second encounter. On the contrary, this intense, 90-minute opera, for six women, a dozen instrumentalists and pre-recorded material, was yet more spiky, cogent, witty and elegiac in its first revival, at the Lyric Hammersmith. It is based on Sarah Kane’s play about the unending labyrinth of clinical depression, finished in 1999 shortly before her suicide at the age of 28.

Venables (b1979), the Royal Opera’s first composer in residence, has said he chose to make an opera from 4.48 Psychosis in part because of his response to the musicality of the text. With so much else to take in when the work was new, from fragmented narrative and unidentifiable characters to the score’s tight, bright skein of musical styles – now minimalist, now rock, close-harmony chorale, a snatch of Bach, a quasi lute song – the verbal aspect did not take on particular prominence. This time it hit home.

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