By all (press) accounts, the overture to The Tempest, Thomas Adès's first full-scale opera, was completed at speed – just five days before the 20 February première, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Comparisons with Rossini naturally followed, but the question remained whether such facility would be married to the necessary substance for a setting of Shakespeare's play Robin Holloway's claim (in the Financial Times) that the opera was ‘make or break’ for Adès may in hindsight come to appear somewhat overstated, but there is no doubt that this was an important milestone in the composer's career.