David T Little’s latest piece of music-theatre arrives on disc with the seal of approval of the Music Critics’ Association of North America, named their Best New Opera of 2025. And it’s hard to argue with the verdict. Adapting Garth Greenwell’s novel of the same name, Little’s work is at once original and deeply allusive, magpie-eclectic and absolutely itself. Tender and confronting, it roughs you up while giving you a lesson in music-theatre. Not bad for an opera with a cast of one.

An unnamed American teaches English in Sofia. An encounter with sex-worker Mitko launches a relationship of mutual exploitation – toxic, sometimes abusive – that only ends with Mitko’s terminal diagnosis. As it progresses, the narrator contemplates his childhood and estranged, homophobic father, his formative gay experiences and the shame, guilt and self-loathing that underpin his own damaged identity and sexuality.

Greenwell’s prose is compressed by the composer himself into its verbal essence – taking phrases and rhythms as well as its plot from the original. It mostly works, though sometimes the author’s descriptive detail – “your tongue antiseptic...