What makes an opera an opera? Rosśa Crean styles The Priestess of Morphine: A Forensic Study of Marie-Madeleine in the Time of the Nazis (2018-19) as a monodrama, though typically monodramas – Erwartung is a fine example – tend to be for a single voice. In The Priestess of Morphine, however, the two soprano singers essentially take the same role, of the Jewish writer Gertrud Günther von Puttkamer (1881-1944) and her literary alter ego Marie-Madeleine. Her controversial writings, considered pornographic in her own lifetime, centred primarily upon lesbian eroticism, often in conjunction with recreational morphine use. Unsurprisingly, she fell foul of the Nazi regime and in 1943 was confined to a sanatorium, where she died the following year.

Having two singers to a part is a rare but not unheard-of operatic device, from times past to Laura Kaminsky’s As One (2014 – Bright Shiny Things, 9/19), also a chamber opera with minimal staging requirements. The Priestess of Morphine feels far more like a song-cycle than an opera: there is little overt dramatic action, the story related through a sequence of six songs alternating between the two singers, though there are places where they sing in unison.

The action takes place to a degree out of time. Crean makes no attempt to depict jackbooted Nazis, sadistic doctors or even the tutting disapproval of the cultured classes of the first third of the 20th century. Everything is viewed through the lens of Marie-Madeleine’s poems (selected by librettist Aiden K Feltkamp) or Gertrud’s vision alone. The result, then, is rather contemplative, inward-looking and self-absorbed, a dreamlike personal reflection operatic only in the depth of perception of its solitary subject.

The performance is very nicely rendered under the composer’s direction. Crean’s playing of the waterphone (in the crucial fourth movement, ‘The Tumbling’) and use of electronics is quite subtle, the main focus being the two sopranos, who sing with commendable fervour, and three accompanists. Navona’s sound is beautifully clear, bringing this weirdly compelling score (quintet? song-cycle? chamber opera?) to life.