Stephen Pettitt
The Sunday Times
October 2010

Berkeley’s third opera (2008) is a brilliant, dark psycho-comedy, written to a clever libretto by Ian McEwan, which delights in caricaturing a fictitious practictioner, Charles Frieth, of Berkeley’s own profession. Frieth is too successful for his own good and has become a ruthless womaniser, consistently unfaithful to his wife, Antonia. He gets his comeuppance when he is framed by his infatuated housekeeper. The music, conducted here by Michael Rafferty, is energetic, deftly coloured and carefully balanced, allowing the excellent voices, including Alan Opie’s Frieth, to make their due mark.