The recording from the Monnaie performances is wonderfully clear and spacious. Every detail of the orchestral writing, with the electronics that Duspain uses very sparingly, registers under Franck Ollu. This is a lingeringly powerful piece of music theatre, no doubt of it.
For almost 20 years, George Benjamin has been thinking about composing an opera. In that time there have been plenty of rumours of him collaborating with leading playwrights, but it is only now that he has found the right person to work with: the British dramatist and translator Martin Crimp. What they have produced, the "lyric tale" Into the Little Hill, premiered under the banner of the Festival d'Automne in Paris, is as entrancingly beautiful as anything Benjamin has written.