Remember Me, Spitalfields Festival, review "Opera at its most intimate," says Spitalfields" publicity about Claudia Molitor's Remember Me. Intimacy implies small scale, and this so-called "desk opera" was certainly small, taking place literally within a desk. It was a pretty one on dainty high legs, with numerous little drawers and a lid, which Molitor inherited from her grandmother. Just right for contriving entrances and exits for a miniaturised opera, was the idea that occurred to the composer. This 50-minute sequence of quietly enigmatic scenes, with Molitor as the only performer, is the result. The desk suggests something sweetly naive, but naivety was kept firmly at bay, not least by the language of the programme note. This described the show as an exploration of memory, woven from "various experiences, places and sites," through ever-changing mediations "connecting and reconfiguring the self." So, not to be taken lightly. What we actually saw was a series of episodes linked by the white-haired elfin figure of the composer herself in a vaguely Grecian frock, looking like a cross between a caryatid and Puck. She ushered us to our seats with a smile, and as music played introduced us to some curious totemic figures within the desk, before gliding into the background. The lights faded, and a film magically appeared on the desk lid, showing hands cutting and reconfiguring something. A metaphor for the elusiveness of memory, perhaps? The sound produced by Molitor's careful shifting of every tiny object was massively magnified, and the music too seemed to exist in an electronically induced echo-chamber, with meditative common chords emerging from harmonic mist. Then Molitor broke into speech, to link the theme of memory to Greek mythology. She recounted an imaginary scene in which the abandoned Dido calls the Underworld "on a pretty poor line" to chat to Eurydice about the heartless behaviour of Greek heroes. But this theme soon gave way to more filmed imagery of decaying rose petals and broken eggs. At the end, as Dido's Lament wafted through speakers, we were individually dismissed, with a whispered injunction which I won't reveal. Technically the show was very adept, with the meshing of film, lighting, recitation and music all smoothly co-ordinated. And the imagery was often very beautiful. But it was more admirable than touching. I longed for some rough edges, and for Molitor to lose her inscrutable smile and show some real feeling. Intimacy needs more than smallness to blossom.