In the experiment of the title, Doctor Ox introduces a gas into a sedate and conservative Flemish village with the result that everyone and everything becomes speeded up and chaotic.

)[1]` The opera explores the conflict between Ox's advocacy of modernity and scientific and political change and Ygène's belief that liberation and the accompanying loss of the traditional rhythms of life might bring unhappiness.

He also included some unusual instruments in his orchestra: an oboe d'amore and an amplified jazz bass in the love scene, an electronic keyboard and a flugelhorn instead of trumpets in the brass section.

Unknown to Bryars, this last had already been the subject of two other operas, the opéra-bouffe Le docteur Ox by Jacques Offenbach and il Dottor Oss by Annibale Bizzelli.

The title refers to the river that flows through the town in Verne's story and to the love scene between Frantz and Suzel that takes place on its banks.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas supplied text for three different compositions and The Green Ray provided the name and inspiration for his saxophone concerto.

They worked together on a concert piece which was premiered as Doctor Ox's Experiment (Epilogue) by the soprano Sarah Leonard and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble in November 1988.

[1] Both composer and librettist were distracted by other projects but Dennis Marks, who had moved from the BBC to become General Director of ENO, commissioned a full-scale opera to be premiered at the Coliseum.

[1] In developing the opera, Bryars and Morrison decided to flesh out some of the roles, including Ox, Ygène and Aunt Hermance.

At one point, the composer considered giving the title role to American rock-singer Tom Waits, who had recorded one of the versions of Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Valdine Anderson and David James went on to partially reprise their roles in Duets from Doctor Ox's Experiment, first performed at La Botanique, Brussels on October 16, 1998.

[4] The original 1988 version of the Epilogue was given in Tallinn in October 2003 sung by Anna Maria Friman, with the NYYD E ensemble conducted by Olari Elts including Bryars on bass.

[4] Bryars wanted the scenes with the lovers to "have something of the purity of early music" and pointed to the obbligato oboe d'amore and the "relatively light orchestral textures" as means by which he achieved this.

In order to make the scientists sound unlike the townspeople, Bryars made Ox a tenor and Ygène a baritone, both parts being agile, lyric and relatively high in their voice range.

"Awful" and "tedious" was the general verdict... My companion, an unjaded musician from Prague, came away entranced... On opening night, I noticed, the loudest cheers came from the under-30s.

"Doctor Ox was aurally alluring, with a row of lyrical ideas flowering from a Straussian seed-bed and just enough drama to justify the stage business – but I was there to enjoy, not review.

He expressed a liking for the hues brought out in the instrumental writing and for the vocal lines and picked out the love scene and Suzel's final monologue as highlights.

"[10] Paul Griffiths found a mixture of beauty and boredom in "a conceptual artist's opera, put together in a spirit of detachment and disbelief.

I wish I could dissent from the general, though not universal, chorus of dispraise that has greeted this long-awaited and fairly long-delayed opera; but unless it has secrets to yield up – and one of the main reasons for feeling so dispirited as it went on was the sense that one might be even more bored, if possible, during a subsequent hearing than during the first – the majority verdict is all too depressingly right.

[14] More positively, Keith Potter thought that Bryars had shown wisdom in selecting a story whose setting suited his taste for slow-moving music and "laid-back nonchalance".

In contrast to some others Potter felt that "Bryars makes ... a success of the ensuing action, which demands, and receives, quicker changes of mood and tempo and the establishment of a real dramatic momentum.

[9] Tanner, however, thought the text rather opaque and found the problem of comprehension aggravated by the high vocal lines which made it difficult to make out the words.

In the town square, the two pairs of lovers and Hermance, their chaperone, sing about how their courtship should not be hurried; engagements should last the same ten years it takes to train as a doctor.

The leading citizens visit Ox and, after initially complaining about his starting work without permission, find themselves telling him to accelerate his plans and get everything ready in a week.