The work is based not so much on Ingmar Bergman’s film of the same name as on the screenplay Bergman wrote for it, adapted by Gunilla Hemming. Anne Sofie von Otter created the role of the lauded pianist Charlotte, a grand artiste with little ability to empathise with the struggling, isolated daughters (one severely paralysed) she visits for the first time in seven years.

Bergman’s story is one where strong emotions are bound up by Nordic reserve until they explode, and that is how this brooding and rather eventless encounter flourishes as an opera. The dramatic flashpoints don’t alter the plot, they wrench it open – emotional abuse, acidic resentment and rampant selfishness grinding up against one another and a lead character so caught between two worlds that she has ceased to exist in either of them.

Fagerlund’s brooding, tension-ridden score is excellent at differentiating between Charlotte (her music all uppity and precious) and Eva (lost in a sea of loneliness and emotional damage) and grinding those elements together to deliver the opera’s sucker punches. Listening without looking, I sometimes wished Fagerlund had given the pace and rhythm at which words are delivered a touch more variation, but was even more impressed with his ability to build the tension in a scene and by the cold grandeur of the opera’s entire sonic realm, reflecting this story of human hubris and folly so well. Second time round, I also found its critique on classical music audiences and their devotion to star artists even more pertinent.

Speaking of which, we don’t quite sense von Otter’s magnificence in the lead role from the audio-only recording, although the slight tiring in her voice is in tune with the character and she has an impressive way of accessing coldness in it, too. She gives it her all and so does a stringent Erika Sunnegårdh as Eva, but Helena Juntunen’s is the voice that pings out of the recording in its fluidity, brightness and support. As the paralysed mute Helena who turns to the audience to tell her story, she offers the opera’s only real ray of hope and image of beauty. All the more effective as John Storgårds marshals the orchestra with the depth, darkness and foreboding it needs, making the most of Fagerlund’s distinctive harmonic tension.