Milne/Hoare/Melrose/ Purves/WNO Orchestra and Chorus/Negus: MacMillan: The Sacrifice

The jury is still out on James ­MacMillan's emotive 2007 opera, which controversially projects a tale from the Mabinogion on to a futuristic ­vision of Britain as a paramilitary tribal ­dystopia. Considered overwhelming by some in the theatre, it comes over as ­intermittent at best on disc. MacMillan has acknowledged that Elektra was on his mind at the time of composition, and like Strauss's masterpiece, The Sacrifice deals with the self-perpetuating nature of unchecked violence. MacMillan is less successful than Strauss, however, in his exploration of both its impact and its psychology. The appalling ­brutality doesn't knock you sideways in purely sonic terms, and the redemptive ­ending, though beautiful, strikes me as ­implausible. Stylistically, meanwhile, the work is indebted not so much to Strauss as to Britten, Shostakovich and Berg. You can't fault the recording, taped live during the first run, and there are outstanding central performances from Lisa Milne as Sian, whose decision to sacrifice love for political idealism unwittingly leads to catastrophe, and from Christopher Purves as her father, the General, who determines to bring the bloodletting to an end at the price of his own life.