Rapture, a new song cycle by Noah Max, premieres on 19 June at Layer Marney Tower as part of Essex Summer Opera Festival. The work sets text from former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s award-winning 2005 collection Rapture, which traces the rise and fall of a love affair from a first-person perspective. Max rearranges the narrative into a three-part structure, beginning at the end of the relationship before circling back to happier times. The cycle is scored for soprano (Susanna MacRae), clarinet (Raymond Brien) and piano (Pavel Timofeyevsky); the soprano takes on the role of the narrator, with the clarinet representing the ​‘lover’ whose own voice is heard only indirectly.