The exterminating angel

"If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel," ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Adès' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Buñuel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El ángel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and

surprising. "Adès keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next."