Before the rise of Silicon Valley and Dionne Warwick’s 1968 hit ‘Do you know the way to San Jose’, California was known for its Winchester Mystery House, a gaudy, sprawling mansion built by a munitions heiress to accommodate in its 160 rooms and 40 staircases the ghosts of America’s gun culture and to expurgate her sins.

This opera in 10 scenes is constructed so that Susan Narucki’s great set piece, Sarah Winchester’s narrative of dread, hope, and madness ‘Once, in New Haven, as I held my daughter to my breast’, emerges not so much out of the story, which is so appropriately disembodied as to be non-existent beyond the basic contours of Winchester’s life, but from the depths of accountability amplified by personal grief. In this and the following even more hair-raising scene, Narucki forces her character to experience almost impossible contrasts of beauty and pain.

While Lei Liang’s opera must obviously be seen to be fully experienced, especially given the press of current events, so sensitively and imaginatively does he mix and match his kaleidoscopic sonic palette to Matt Donovan’s freely evocative, numerology-obsessed libretto, the quartet of voices, the curious ensemble and the electronics that the highly charged narrative makes a deep impression even without the stagecraft. The recording captures the drama, layering the voices with the ideally captured instrumental riffs so that it’s all perfectly clear and precise without being surgical. Unless Sarah had something to do with it, it was sheer coincidence that Inheritance was premiered in the same year as Winchester starring Helen Mirren was released.