"Opera choice: Vanessa is a great American masterpiece. Not just because of Samuel Barber's luscious score ... but also the immaculate libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, with its chilling sense of mystery. Here now is the production and cast that Vanessa has been waiting for ... A staircase worthy of film noir and, behind the fashionably distressed grand sofas and salon chairs, a dark brooding forest. Human hearts are gripped by ice here ... Virginia Verrez is magnificent as Erika ... Rosalind Plowright is a knowing but haughty Baroness, and Edgara Montvidas oozes boyish charm as Anatol. But it's Emma Bell's Vanessa that holds your eyes and ears. Passionate, trusting, fearful and deluded, she never puts an elegant 1950s foot wrong from the opening ... Bell and the whole cast are admirably served by Jakub Hrusa conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra".