Alexander Waugh, Evening Standard

East and West (1995)

Modern horrors of the race war… “A proselytizing treatise on the horrors of modern racism shrouded in the deleterious mystique of contemporary operatic entertainment (?) In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. East and West is, above all, a human drama: more like an explosive episode of “Neighbours” than a pulpit lecture on the downside of capitalism. Central to the plot is a love affair between a German Youth and his Moslem girlfriend. Their parents have long been friends, but when they discover that the boy is a knee-jerk fascist who cavorts with all the dimmest flick-knife hoodlums in the town, relations, at all levels, begin to buckle with the strain. With all the classic ingredients of an old-fashioned opera (love, hate, fear, betrayal, longing, lusting and killing) East and West is a healthy step in the right direction for contemporary music theatre. Jonathan Moore’s libretto leans away from the cerebral dialogue of the last two decades towards more traditional methods of emotive characterisation and vivid story-telling. Another success for the bandwagonof popular opinion hich has been vociferously insisting that contemporary opera assert itself as a pertinent. Intelligible and entertaining art form, or die in ignominy from the inevitable effects of its own stifling complexity.”