The Perfect American, ENO, review I must have seen and heard over half of Philip Glass's 26 stage works, produced with the regularity and rapidity of an 18th-century court composer. Powered by his characteristic form of masturbatory minimalist repetition, pounding underneath shapeless vocal lines, most of them have for my taste proved purgatorially prolix and relentless. But there must be something in them - they've been popular for 25 years now, and attract a significantly different and younger audience to the opera house. The Perfect American hasn't explained the secret of Glass" appeal to me, but it's far from the worst of his efforts (Galileo Galilei I shudder to recall). Adapted from Peter Stephen Jungk's speculative biographical novel, it reviews the inner life of Walt Disney, pivoting on his reflections and memories during the last cancer-consumed months of his life. The action unfolds discontinuously, in a series of snapshots or vignettes, mostly designed to show what a twisted, paranoid reactionary he was, with a bit of moist-eye welling up at the end. Passing from his sunny Midwest childhood through his blind patriotism and hostility to trade unions to home in on his terror of mortality, Christopher Purves projects an egomaniacal control-freak with his usual admirable panache. But the opera's attempt to debunk Disney's achievement - "you're nothing but a moderately successful CEO," someone screams at him - doesn't convince, and the personality which emerges is ultimately as two-dimensional as the image of chummy Uncle Walt that we all snuggled up with. Glass's music does have a certain wide-eyed charm, however, graced with some nice orchestral colouring and a touch of Copland-esque folksiness. The vocal writing remains vacuous and I couldn't ultimately rate the score as more than tofu-textured pap, but at least it doesn't send you screaming up the wall with its banging persistence. On a set which evokes a film studio, Phelim McDermott's production offers another of his slick and fluent exercises in stagecraft, combining 59 Productions" imaginative video (which for copyright reasons can't include any Disney footage) with a lot of old-fashioned revolving and cascading. The supporting cast dutifully executes what little is required of it - only Donald Kaasch as a disgruntled ex-employee is given the chance to make any impact - and Gareth Jones's baton adeptly keeps things together in the pit. But is this the future of opera? I do hope not. Until June 28. Tickets: 020 7845 9300; eno.org