By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 4 July 2006]

Almost 200 years after its premiere, Beethoven’s opera seems as painfully relevant as ever. Deborah Warner’s 2001 production for Glyndebourne came too soon to transport this drama of prisoners held without trial to Guantánamo Bay, but it is still set in the present. Costumes and surroundings are unspecific enough to suggest that the events could be happening anywhere, but they are certainly happening now.