Community operas have to fulfil two criteria. They need to challenge and excite their performers – mostly, as on this occasion, non-professionals – and they have to work as viable stage works in their own right. That is not as easy as it might sound, and it is to the credit of librettist Stephen Plaice, composer Orlando Gough and director Susannah Waters that their new piece, Imago, achieves both these aims.

Plaice's libretto tells an unusual tale about Elizabeth, an elderly occupant of a care home, introduced by a therapist, Andy, to a computer programme that allows her to create a younger version of herself, whom she names Lisette. In this guise she goes on to explore a virtual world of cyberdanger as well as social protest and romance. As the dying Elizabeth loses control of her own creation, the blurring of the lines between the real and the imaginary resonates with intimations of mortality as well as wry observations on family behaviour and fantasy entertainment.

Gough seizes the potential in the libretto. His score, confidently delivered under conductor Nicholas Collon, with the Aurora Orchestra augmented by young student instrumentalists and a lively amateur chorus of 75 participants, is inventive, characterful and above all pacy. The modified minimalism of John Adams blends with imaginatively enhanced parodies of popular styles. If one or two sections are less than memorable and a couple could be profitably shortened, the piece's best scenes combine immediacy with subtlety.

An instant hit with the audience is the wedding scene, where the larger-than-life Hip Vicar, charismatically played by George Ikediashi, presides over Lisette's marriage to fellow-imago Gulliver, sung by Adam Gilbert; the resulting grand-scale, 1950s doo-wop ensemble earns a spontaneous round of applause from the audience – not a frequent event in contemporary opera. Playing equally engagingly with pop idioms is the appearance of the virtual band the Headshots, fronted by Gulliver; yet in all his pastiches, Gough adds distinctive touches of his own that give them intricacy and depth. Also memorable is the scene where protester Gulliver is apparently shot dead at an Occupy demonstration that eventually floods out into the Glyndebourne stalls.

Waters's staging offers consistent flair, while Es Devlin's and Bronia Housman's slap-up designs are wittily contemporary. Jean Rigby's dignified Elizabeth, Joanna Songi's lyrical Lisette and Daniel Norman's well-intentioned Andy lead a cast whose general excellence is compromised by weak diction. But the opera is a genuine success, and should be revived as soon as possible.

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Contributor

George Hall

The GuardianTramp

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