A combat of savage beasts, where “each smile reveals a sharp tooth”, where the tongue cuts like a knife: this is the _Quartett_ by Heiner Müller, who freely took inspiration from Choderlos de Laclos’ _Dangerous Liaisons_, raising it to an unparalleled level of cruelty and poisonous irony. Premiered at La Scala in Milan in 2011 by the Catalan team of La Fura dels Baus, this stunning production employs a voyeuristic device – a cage suspended between heaven and earth – enclosing the two singers who embody the four roles in this gripping and wily combat of sex and love to the death. Huge video projections open up this closed world to a global dimension.

Luca Francesconi, who himself wrote the libretto in English for this, his second opera, gives expression to all the inner recesses through serpentine vocal virtuosity. He weaves around the singers a sumptuous instrumental casing highlighted by fluid and ethereal electronics, thus creating a multiple space. Captured in velour, this human ferocity is all the more disturbing. The spectator, invited to follow this “claustrophobic peep show” (sic), trustingly penetrates a bunker camouflaged as a boudoir...