Art: Greek fire still burns bright
For Greek – based on Steven Berkoff’s Oedipal plot and adapted into Estuary English vernacular by librettist Jonathan Moore and the composer himself – is an opera that made its mark as a dissenting child of its time; a brutal depiction of Thatcherite Britain, set against the violent unrest of the miners’ strike and inner city riots of the 1980s.
Eddy, the dysfunctional hero, swears like a trooper, suffers police brutality, is generally angry and frustrated with his lot, and in a final note of defiance hollers “bollocks to all that” at his own funeral. Not for nothing has it been compared to an explosive episode of EastEnders.
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