★★★☆☆
So, no “exit pursued by a bear”, then. Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, and several hundred lines of blank verse, disappear in Ryan Wigglesworth’s concise new operatic adaptation of The Winter’s Tale. On the other hand, you do get music — magnificently sung and played in this English National Opera premiere under Wigglesworth’s direction. And it’s an admirably crafted score, if you like unremitting old-fashioned atonality done with an orchestral flourish.
Indeed, the most memorable moments come from the orchestral pit: accelerating percussion storms for Leontes’s mounting jealousy; sinister brass belches for the show trial of his wife, Hermione, on a trumped-up adultery charge; mournful double-bass slithers as he rues his guilt-ridden insomnia; and virtually a mini-concerto for solo flute as the story