The only complaint is that the work’s structure gives this most engaging performer too little time on stage. So too did the British soprano Nadine Benjamin, as the mother. The American bass Kenneth Kellogg as the father, a role full of pain, anger and kindness, and the South African tenor Zwakele Tshabalala (also a Harewood artist) as the son, sang with bristling, heartfelt intensity. This soon yields to the work’s central story: a relationship between a father who is a police officer and his son, a talented teenager engaged in Black activism and peaceful protest, who can hardly bear having a cop for a parent. The ponderous start, despite luscious singing from a sassy trio of “girlfriends” ( Chanáe Curtis, Sarah-Jane Lewis and ENO Harewood artist Idunnu Münch), is followed by an even slower scene in a Harlem maternity ward. In the fickle business of creativity, a work can be uneven yet still triumph.

The works touch on similar issues, but Blue, full of gentle humour and humanity, arguably makes its point more acutely. By chance timing, it offers a sharp contrast to Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at the Royal Opera House, reviewed last week. Of greater importance, Blue is a rewarding show, expertly sung, powerful in impact. With a story about the lost lives of young Black men, a text in English and a score whose unusual contours are shaped by melodic ballads, as well as jazz, gospel and blues, the work could hardly have ticked more diversity boxes. The libretto is by the playwright, director and actor Tazewell Thompson, with music by Jeanine Tesori, whose work spans Broadway musicals, film and opera. If only the decision-makers – whoever they are – had been at ENO to experience Blue (2019), a much-performed American work, first seen at the Glimmerglass festival in upstate New York, being given its UK premiere. After the Proms, who knows? This is a battle for classical music’s survival.

Lurking behind his words is the implication that whatever reprise BBC musicians or English National Opera have now, it is likely to be temporary. In a speech from the platform (last Sunday, at a London Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican, issued as a media statement after), Rattle made his most urgent appeal yet: that those with power, specifically the BBC and Arts Council England, without any coherent plan, stop cutting away “at the flesh of our culture”.

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