Classic CD: Gerald Barry: The Importance of Being Earnest (NMC)

CD cover: The Importance of Being Earnest.

Gerald Barry's operatic transformation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest deals out the sort of zany outrage too rare in the classical music world. The opera has been a success, with a number of European productions - you can watch it on YouTube.

The CD, from valiant NMC Recordings, is as entertaining as it is engrossing, even if the eyes have only a libretto to peruse (and Paul Griffiths' booklet essay). You may even chuckle along with the audience at this live performance.

Barry's operatic ventures have included a mesmerising take on Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, and he describes his most recent 70-minute libretto as a metallic skeleton of the original Wilde play.

Compensating for the many witty ripostes that fell on the cutting-room floor, the Irish composer has certainly energised a classic and seditious comedy of manners. Its overture is a short piano solo, played by Barry; a savage brutalisation of Auld Lang Syne, that turns out to be Algernon's overheard on-stage piano solo.

There are other rib-tickling quotes. The words of Schiller's Ode to Joy, best known from Beethoven's Choral Symphony, inspire Lady Bracknell into pattermania, reflecting on the eminent respectability of the German language for musical purposes.

The wacky unpredictability of it all may unsettle the unwary. Barry and his cast are expert in free-flying speech-song, although these singers can also pluck random notes out of the air, precisely and prestissimo, sounding like Webern on speed.

The celebrated bitchery of Gwendolen and Cecily is delicious, delivered through megaphones, punctuated by op-shop crockery being smashed.

The 21 players of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are expertly conducted by Thomas Ades. They provide a thesaurus of amusing effects, including the lumbering landler from the six brass players that interrupts Algernon protesting the validity of his real name.

The cast, to a singer, is superb with Alan Ewing's basso Lady Bracknell dominating the drawing-room as a grande dame should; cucumber sandwiches too for the staggering coloratura of Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan.

Verdict: "Irish composer shows that opera today can survive, thrive and be riotously funny."