The Importance of Being Earnest (opera)

In describing his technique, the composer has further said in respect of act 3: Everyone's on stage, terrible scandals have been revealed about Miss Prism and the baby, and Canon Chasuble comes in and says "Everything is ready for the christening."

[3] The opera was given its first staged performances on 17 March 2013 at the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy, directed by Sam Brown and conducted by Tito Muñoz,[4] and in June 2013 at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre, the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Tim Murray, with Stephanie Marshall as Gwendolyn and Hilary Summers reprising her Miss Prism from Los Angeles.

[6] In April and May 2019, a new production staged by Julien Chavaz and conducted by Jérôme Kuhn at the Nouvel Opéra Fribourg [fr] (Fribourg, Switzerland) and the Théâtre de l'Athénée (Paris) presented its Swiss and Paris premiere with Graeme Danby as Lady Bracknell, Ed Ballard as Algernon, Timur as John Worthing, Nina van Essen as Gwendolen and Alison Scherzer as Cecily.

Algernon, however, refuses his consent until 'Ernest' explains why his cigarette case bears the inscription "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack."

Algernon confesses to a similar deception: he pretends to have an invalid friend named Bunbury in the country, whom he can "visit" whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome social obligation.

The garden of John Worthing's estate Cecily is studying with her governess, Miss Prism, who extols the German language, also giving a rendition of the Ode to Joy.

Long fascinated by her Uncle Jack's mysterious black sheep brother, she is predisposed to fall for Algernon in his role of Ernest (a name she, like Gwendolen, is apparently particularly fond of).

The impasse is broken when Lady Bracknell hears mention of Miss Prism, and recognises her as the person who, twenty-eight years earlier, as a family nursemaid, had taken a baby boy for a walk in a perambulator and never returned.

Challenged, Miss Prism explains that she had absent-mindedly put the manuscript of a novel she was writing in the perambulator, and the baby in a handbag, which she had left at Victoria Station.

[3] Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade noted the climax to the confrontation of Cicely and Gwendolyn when the latter proceeded to attack her tea-companion with acerbic remarks while 40 dinner plates were systematically demolished by a percussionist on the off-beats.

[5]Matthew Rye commented on the 2016 London production Barry deliberately and constantly subverts our expectations, transcending the original and creating something completely new.

He gets through acres of Wilde's text ... in almost patter style and to motoric regular rhythms that play against word stress and meaning; and then he sets the most mundane of phrases such as “They have been eating muffins” to extravagant melismas.

[11] In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked it the 11th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Andrew Clements writing that it "brilliantly captures the play’s absurdities while adding a layer of surrealism that is entirely Barry’s own.