Popular Italian ‘atmospheric’ composer Ludovico Einaudi stretches his wings with a full-scale opera, exploring the many and tragic dimensions of the refugee crisis which has engulfed Europe in the last decade. It’s a triumph; emotionally engaging, dramatically compelling and cathartic.

As the auditorium lights go down, the soft but driving pulse of Einaudi’s music rises from the pit. It’s an evocation of the sea, entirely familiar in style and content to fans of this most popular of contemporary composers, the most downloaded artists of all time in the field of classical streaming. The stage lights come up slowly, revealing a character suspended high above the stage, bobbing up and down. A video projection of the sea emerges, placing the bobbing man above and sometimes below the waves of the Mediterranean. It’s a captivating coup de theatre, telling us at once that Winter Journey is going to be much, much more than an ephemeral or lightweight musical experience – two of the adjectives which Einaudi’s detractors use to describe his music.

Winter Journey. All photographs © Rosellina Garbo

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