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Steven Van Der Linden as Juan Preciado and Yolisa Ngwexana as Damiana Cisneros | Photo: David Monteith-Hodge / Photographise

Stephen McNeff’s A Star Next to the Moon has the magical phenomena and lore in a contemporary setting that is typically found in magical realism, alongside the gothic elements of mystery, the paranormal and gloom. This creates the story of a haunting, the past bleeding to the present in a liminal space, throughout bloodlines, histories and neighborhoods.

Juan Preciado, performed lyrically by Steven van der Linden, starts as a wide-eyed, dutiful son returning to Comala to find his father at the request of his recently deceased mother, powerfully and consistently sung by Shana Moron-Caravel. This request and the journey’s beginning is the last brush with reality for the entire opera, as we fall into the nonlinear storylines and time-skips that eventually paint a complex picture of a town’s troubled past.

Martin Lloyd-Evans effectively used the ensemble as the chorus, creating a powerful narrative thread. With their constant presence, we watch the breakdown of time as the characters’ pasts, and ultimately their deaths, are uncovered - stories of incest, stillbirth, trafficking and revolution carried with astonishing maturity by the young singers. Each character was uniquely rendered, interactive with the set and lighting design, and physically committed enough that despite the repetitive motifs and porous sense of time creating a lack of plot drive, there was enough to hold the audience’s attention.

Ana-Carmen Balestra as The Sister & Shana Moron-Caravel as Justina | Photo: David Monteith-Hodge / Photographise

The work requires a specific set of voices, each role demanding extended techniques, register switches, and all of the usual musical complexities of a contemporary score. The singers were extremely well cast and went boldly into the challenges, with vocal standouts from Vladyslava Ionascu-Yakovenko, playing Eduviges Dyada, who had a brave, bottomless chest voice and managed to effectively portray the physicality of the crone archetype, and Yolisa Ngwexana as Damiana Cisneros. Though not a large role, the flexibility and purity of her voice was a golden thread throughout, and her stage presence had poise and confidence beyond her years.

The final act breaks down further, and we learn more about the subject of Juan’s curiosity - his father, Pedro Páramo. Jacob Harrison was thoroughly believable as a fickle, self-serving land-owner, and equally used more tender aspects of his warm baritone to portray his helplessness in the face of being powerless over madness taking the only wife he ever loved. Despite being described as ‘living bile’ by one of his abandoned sons, the end was devastating as it was touching, with some impressive falsetto and vulnerability that portrayed the desolation of loss that lasts a lifetime.

This is not an opera for everyone, but it is for those who want to lift the veil and stare into the dark. Its conflicts and contrasts never quite allow the audience to get too comfortable, and the delivery on stage suitably portrayed an unnerving portrait ‘more the next world than this.’

A Star Next to the Moon is at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama until 4 March | www.gsmd.ac.uk