Sophie's Choice

In William Styron's novel, the character of Nathan describes his first meeting with Sophie as positively cinematic, a Hollywood daydream. Hollywood agreed. Sophie's Choice became Meryl Streep's Oscar. Now comes Nicholas Maw's opera, and the moment of Nathan's fateful meeting with Sophie brings with it the first of many orchestral releases primed to wash over us like vintage Korngold or Waxman or Steiner, or, indeed, any of the composers from Hollywood's golden age. Sophie's Choice – the opera – feels as though it has bypassed the novel and sprung directly from the movie. Its narrative is cinematic, its emotional directness is cinematic – which is to say, rudimentary.

Trevor Nunn's production fluently intercuts and dissolves from one scene to the next (when the hand-manoeuvred scenic trucks of Rob Howell's design permit); a handy group of extras double as Brooklynites and human cargo bound for Auschwitz. Close-ups are effected by the ubiquitous follow-spot. And as the long evening unfolds (at just over four hours), it's like watching the movie – albeit beautifully underscored – in slow motion.

Maw's first mistake in adapting this great story for the musical stage was to write his own libretto. A truly creative librettist would have found ways of intensifying, contracting, stylising the drama in specifically operatic terms. Maw relies too heavily on the slavish reproduction of lengthy dialogue scenes, and because opera still insists that we sing everything (the Broadway mix of dialogue and song makes for more textual variety), the subtle nuance of the vernacular is eventually ironed out in what begins to sound like overly discursive recitative.

Maw understands the American vernacular well (though English himself, he lives in the States), and his excellent cast's exemplary diction gives it rhythm and bite, but with so many sung words and so few extended arias – where song as opposed to songfulness can really heighten the expression – the uniformity of the word-setting begins to pall.

Make no mistake, there is beautiful and passionate music in Sophie's Choice – but the orchestra claims most of it. Cleverly, Maw gives the lie to Sophie's recollections of an idyllic childhood by bathing her words in beatific modal string chords. Its "religiosity" (very Vaughan Williams/Thomas Tallis) is too chaste to be true – we know it's a fantasy, which is chilling.

Equally chilling is Maw's counterpointing of the scene in which Nathan proudly reflects on his Jewish heritage with the revelation of Sophie's anti-Semitic father. The two scenes are played out in parallel with the two-level set rising out of the ground to reveal (in flashback) what is essentially the sinister underbelly to all of Sophie's "choices".

As for Maw's musical choices, he would seem to be gravitating between the lyric legacy of a Samuel Barber and – in the Auschwitz-related scenes – a Hindemithian starkness and rigour. The entire 20th century is alive and well in his score, but does it ever really push the boundaries of our expectations? Hardly.

That said, the musical values of this eagerly anticipated world premiere are extremely high. At its heart is a spectacular performance from Angelika Kirchschlager as Sophie, a woman quite literally on the run from the shadow of her own guilt. The guilt of survival. Ironically, her sung English is so perfect and unaccented that it makes the broken English of the writing somewhat puzzling. But her commitment to the role is palpable. Throughout the long evening, you feel that she can barely suppress the primal scream that will finally shake her tiny frame when the cruellest choice of all is forced upon her.

Rodney Gilfry is physically, vocally, charismatically perfect for Nathan, though the terrifying mood swings, in all their cynicism and irony, can only really be conveyed in finer nuances of speech. Gordon Gietz as the sweetly reliable Stingo has perhaps the most ardent music to sing, and seizes it gratefully. As Stingo's older self, Dale Duesing is very impressive as our on-stage Narrator, though Trevor Nunn's decision to keep him there throughout at times renders him susceptible to overemoting. He and his younger self movingly come together for the final setting of Emily Dickinson's words, "Ample make this bed", and as the music tapers away to a pinprick of light, you are made aware, once again, of Simon Rattle's selfless advocacy of this music, and also of the fact that these beautiful final minutes have been a very long time coming.

Further performances: 16, 19 & 21 December (020-7304 4000; www.royalopera.org)