‘James Kirkup’s excellent libretto of child-like directness is epigrammatic rather than rhapsodic in its poetic set-pieces…Minoru Miki’s music centers around the voice parts. There is little ensemble; voices are used in a generally smooth conjunct style which is paralleled in all ages, all cultures…Miki is a dramatic composer of real flair.’
The Guardian (Hugo Cole)‘A score of an exact, sophisticated and self-effacing skill, not only in its blend of Eastern and Western elements, but in the way in which is slowly and compellingly marshals its power. Precisely reflecting the tradition in which the opera has been conceived, it is music in which every gesture tells, its lean, subtly refined idiom trenchantly accommodating the utmost ferocity and the utmost pathos.’
Daily Telegraph (Robert Henderson)