The composer's virtuosic use of a chamber ensemble, rather than the huge orchestral and electronic forces deployed, for instance, in The Mask of Orpheus, is generally seen as having produced an intensely atmospheric and psychologically insightful score.

"The notion that a holiday fling on a Greek island - however intense the connection, however heavy with meaning, however supernatural - might be analogous to the rape of Io by Zeus is peculiar enough.

That that analogy might be titillating to someone whose former lover has effectively become her stalker smacks of the era when liberal men would chomp on their cigars while discussing the female orgasm.

Discussing a scene in which ferocious argument leads to a passionate kiss, he wrote, Harrison Birtwistle's opera, then, does not merely concern itself with the truth of the mythical parable - how the ancient Cretan matriarchy was conquered by invading tribes, how the Mother Goddess was usurped by a Zeus whose barbarian horniness knew no bounds... That is a sinister and accurate picture, the picture of the powerlessness of cultures.

The "rich circadian cycle of nocturnes and aubades for string quartet and basset clarinet is punctuated by ravishing ariettas, spluttered outbursts of unresolved argument and high-arching angular recitative".

The man and the woman met at Lerna in Greece, the venue of one of the Mysteries of the ancient world, and the place where Zeus seduced the priestess Io and turned her into a heifer to hide her from his jealous wife, Hera.