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Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House; Wigmore Hall, LondonThe sad fate of Rosemary Kennedy is strikingly told by Irish National Opera. Plus, the female French composer we should all know about…A mesh of squares and rectangles, charts, grids and graph paper forms the visual harness in which the central character in Least Like the Other is held immobile. The human instinct to engineer and make straight that which is socially wayward and irregular is explored in sharp focus, its tragic consequences laid bare, in this one-act work performed by Irish National Opera at the Royal Opera’s Linbury theatre. The composer Brian Irvine and co-creator Netia Jones (director, designer and video designer) have sifted the evidence – interviews, newspaper reports, newsreel – and woven an engrossing docu-opera for four performers and small orchestra, part scored, part improvised.The result is a many-layered meditation on the eldest sister of John F Kennedy, one of America’s brilliant Kennedy dynasty but considered decidedly less gleaming than her eight siblings. After a lobotomy in 1941 at the age of 23, Rosemary – superbly sung by the young Irish soprano Amy Ní Fhearraigh – lived away from public view until her death in 2005. For most patients, a lobotomy dulled the senses into “perpetual marble calm”, as Sylvia Plath described it in The Bell Jar. This short-lived and brutal form of psychosurgery was in its fashionable infancy. The promise of a panacea for all mental ills proved irresistible, not least to Rosemary’s father, Joseph P Kennedy Sr, who secretly arranged the procedure for his sweet, beautiful but unstable daughter. Continue reading...