Despite myriad musical textures and styles, the score did hold together. Movement, Lye's own catchword, was a unifying force. Even when Te Oti Rakena and chorus were decrying modernism in staunch 4/4, clouds drifted gracefully across the sky through the windows of academe.
London in 1921 was caught on the dance-floor, resourcefully choreographed by Emily Campbell. The high soprano of Ursula Langmayr playing Lye's first wife, Jane, was not always word-friendly, but she made the most of the composer's individual takes on the rumba and blues.
Harrison worked well with expressive arioso, spinning enough art theory and politics to rival Sondheim's Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George.
After interval, a big band rumble ushered us into the 1940s, and Darryn Harkness' breezily vernacular streetsinger, singing to his own bottleneck guitar.
Anna Pierard was a deeply sympathetic presence as Lye's second wife, Ann. She may not have had memorable solo turns but, in deep and searching duet with Harrison, she helped forge a personal and aesthetic heart for the opera.
Perhaps the last act tried too hard to satisfy the demands of an operatic finale. Words were too often lost and the chorus was ragged. Not enough, though, to detract from a stimulating work that deserves to have a life after this short season.
What: Len Lye The Opera
Where: Maidment Theatre
When: Wednesday
