Review Roundup: English National Opera's 9/11 Opera BETWEEN WORLDS

Between Worlds is the highly anticipated operatic debut from composer Tansy Davies, who collaborates with director Deborah Warner and librettist Nick Drake on this world premiere from the English National Opera.

In this sensitive and spiritual journey inspired by the events of 9/11, a group of individuals are trapped high up in one of the Twin Towers, caught between earth and heaven, life and death.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

Andrew Clements of the Guardian: Certainly Between Worlds has all the paraphernalia of an opera. What appears on stage in the Barbican theatre (this year's venue for ENO's now annual excursion to a smaller, more flexible space) is an elaborate set on three levels designed by Michael Levine, a sizeable orchestra in the pit conducted by Gerry Cornelius, 14 solo singing roles and a chorus. And yet there are very few moments in the 85-minute work when it feels as if Davies's score is driving the action, or that what the audience is seeing and hearing is a piece in which music has a shaping role in the drama.

Ivan Hewett of The Telegraph: Deborah Warner's production is emotionally forthright but tellingly restrained in its suggestion of the disasters that strike the protagonists out of the blue (in that respect it's the exact opposite of the Hollywood blockbuster approach to disaster, which pictures the physical events in minute detail but leaves our feelings untouched).

Michael Church of the Independent: ...the psychological truth of this inexorable drama - which perfectly observes the unities of Greek tragedy - comes across with awesome power. Rather than crassly upping the decibels when a plane strikes the tower, Davies suggests sonic immensity through abrupt musical understatement; she creates keening effects with coloratura, and the heterophony she habitually deploys has the chorus sounding like a flock of frightened birds.

Charlotte Valori of Bachtrack: Gripping, harrowing and profoundly serious, Between Worlds takes on one of the most shocking acts of terrorism in the modern era: 9/11. The opera inhabits the North Tower before, during and after the attacks. As desperation mounts inside the tower, while those inside still can't fully understand what has happened, hysteria builds on the ground amongst the crowd below, appallingly aware and frantic for news of their loved ones. Our five main characters are marooned in a conference room on one of the highest floors, gradually realising that escape is impossible and death imminent. Their fear and anger resolve into a primal urge to communicate; to reach out one last time and say what must be said before parting forever: "I love you", "I'm sorry" and most hauntingly, "Please take care of my child". Amid the devastation, this act of communication becomes, in its own way, a kind of protest: a kind of victory, the love of individuals winning out over the terrible act of hatred which cut so many lives short.

Jessica Duchen of theartsdesk.com: Composer Tansy Davies and librettist Nick Drake's opera Between Worlds cannot help but be a devastating tribute to the tragedy of 9/11. Yet the whole is peppered with problems that mean this result is achieved only intermittently. Davies - whose first opera this is - and the playwright Drake, with Deborah Warner directing, have picked a topic that would seem at first glance to demand the scale of a modern-dayGötterdämmerung. The result they extrapolate is far from that - but when it does succeed, it is in ways that are not really about 9/11 at all.

George Hall of thestage.com: Davies' score does the same. She shows real skill in the more minute aspects of orchestral colour and texture, writing with taste and some sense of atmosphere; but there's an anonymity about the vocal writing that prevents close engagement with the characters, and too much of the music passes by without leaving a significant trace behind. Gerry Cornelius nevertheless conducts the 35-piece orchestra with commitment.

BARRY MILLINGTON of standard.com: Unlike John Adams's politically aware Death of Klinghoffer, Between Worlds does not investigate the causes of the atrocity. Rather it is a meditation on how four people, representative of humanity at large, come to terms with imminent mortality, with the tragedy of sundered relationships and opportunities lost for ever.

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