Set amidst the grubby glamour of London in the Fifties, Entanglement charts two years in the lives of the trio as they are driven towards their tragic destiny – and the act that will see Ruth Ellis defined forever as the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
Reviewing the world premiere, Rian Evans of The Guardian praised the opera, writing, "Bray and Rosenthal are at pains to go deeper into Ellis's story than her defence team did at the time, emphasising her abusive relationship with the shallow Blakely (tenor Greg Tassell), her anger at being rejected by his friends, and the apparent complicity of a former lover, Desmond Cussen (baritone Howard Quilla Croft), whose gun was her weapon.
As one corner of the love-triangle, the tenor Greg Tassell sang the part of David Blakeley with a dash and a sweetness straight out of Puccini – with music to match Ruth Ellis's deluded vision of her abusive lover.
Bray's music for Ruth veers from poignant, expressive arioso ("I'm not the kind of girl he could take home to meet his parents") to chilling calm in the two final scenes, where she coolly dismisses the future of her children and invites her own death by hanging.He added, "Simply staged by director Richard Williams with minimal lighting and back-projected captions, and eloquently conducted by Vass, Entanglement created characters that live with you after the drama has ended: a sure-fire sign that it needs to be seen again, and soon.
"[5] However, Richard Morrison of The Times was more critical of the work, remarking, "With lurid subjects ripped from the tabloid headlines of 60 years ago, this new operatic double bill at the Cheltenham Festival should have been more gripping than it was.