Critical Responses
- US premiere performance review by Bernard Holland: "Making Light Of a Duchess Given to Night Music", The New York Times, December 10, 1998
- "...an opera about an arresting, beautiful, inwardly inadequate, and finally tragic woman, whom imagined as 'all cladding powder, scent, painting, furs, nothing inside', whose life finally crumbles about her. The form of the work might be described as 'cabaret-opera'..." (Andrew Porter, The programme note)
- "The harp is the Duchess's particular instrument, 'swathing' her with perfume, jewels, rich fabrics, all the trappings of decorative exterior" (Andrew Porter, The programme note)
- "Journalist and writer Paul Griffiths called the music of Powder Her Face 'the music of the future', written by one who has 'the panache of a great opera composer'." (Andrew Porter, The programme note)
- "Camp, spiteful, sneering little opera unworthy of Thomas Adès' talent. This bitchy little piece is based on the infamous Duchess of Argyll (she of the 'headless man' sex photos), seen in her last impoverished days, mocked by hotel staff and presumably smart-arse literati looking for a target for their adult wit. This performance is announced as 'semi-staged'; whether that includes the blow-job that's written into it is about the only point of interest in this arid little piece of superannuated adolescent exhibitionism. The composer conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in his pointlessly nifty score, with a cast led by the expert Mary Plazas and Valdine Anderson." (review in Time Out, London, 8 June 2006)
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