‘This is not an entertainment,” Michael McCarthy says with a slight laugh. “This is cultural activity . . . it’s not just an opera, it’s a very alive, very dynamic, very engaging piece of work.”

He is talking about Philip Glass’s chamber opera In the Penal Colony, a dark, powerful, psychological study of the inhumanity of execution and its effect upon the victim and the executioner. It was first produced in Seattle in 2000, and is about to be given its UK premiere at the Linbury Theatre, London, by Music Theatre Wales, before coming to Oxford as part of a three-month national tour.

Based on a story by Franz Kafta, it centres on a soldier condemned to death for insubordination, who must endure six hours of torture in a barbaric machine, observed by a horrified visitor. ‘The Officer’ in charge undergoes a gradual change of heart, and the opera comes to an unexpected climax.

It sounds gruesome, but Michael insists it will be an exciting and ultimately fulfilling piece. “You go to the theatre for an experience,” he says. “If you want to be moved, if you want to be engaged, even possibly provoked, if you want to go on a musical, dramatic, intelligent journey, this is the stuff.

“This is no different to going to see new work in an art gallery, or to a concert, where you might encounter work you don’t know. If you’re seeking that experience, it enhances you. It’s a valid and true and thoughtful experience, and I think Philip Glass has written it with great integrity.”

So how do you bring such a work to the stage in an effective and credible way?

“We’ve decided to find a way of bringing the audience close to it, looking at the impact of the machine and the situation of the people, rather than looking at the machine and the landscape of the penal colony itself. What’s really interesting about the work is the way it looks at the man stuck inside the machine. We’re looking at not the emotional reaction to it, but the psychological reaction.

“It’s about people — the man who runs the machine is horribly tainted by it and what he’s required to do.”

The story has a twist, though, in that the Officer believes that the condemned man has a moment of transfiguration, when he accepts his crime and is ready to embrace death. “It’s almost religious,” says Michael, “and it gives the Officer the justification for continuing with this barbaric thing.”

Michael has decided not to put the machine onstage, but to leave it to the imagination. “I’ve chosen just to focus on very minimal staging. And what’s great is that when I talked to Philip Glass about the production, he said ‘This looks like it could be the production I’ve been waiting to see.’ “A nice outcome of that is that we’re now working with Philip to create an additional electronic sound to represent the machine. The creative collaboration between us and Philip is wonderful. I think his approach to theatre is extraordinary — he’s not just a composer, he’s a dramatist, and the implications of his music on the nature of drama cannot be underestimated.”

To increase the sense of intimacy, the singers and the accompanying string quartet will be amplified — “not to increase the volume,” Michael says, “but to access the closest possible point of the source of the sound. So if you think of not the loudspeaker but the microphone, and where that force is — right on the mouth of the singer, or the string of the violin — we get drawn right inside the piece.”

In most venues, the piece will be staged in the round, but although this won’t be possible in Oxford, Michael is confident that the experience will be as compelling. “There’ll be no difference between the theatres where there will be people sitting on the side of the stage and Oxford where they won’t. We’ll make sure the same aural experience will be there, and the same level of intimacy.”

As always, MTW have recruited a strong cast, including Omar Ebrahim as the Officer, Michael Bennett as the Visitor and actor Gerald Tyler as the Condemned Man, with Michael Rafferty conducting.

“It’s going to be very beautifully played and really, really well sung,” promises Michael. “So, opera fans, don’t be put off by the fact that it’s new. It’s a new way of thinking about opera, but it is still opera.”

In the Penal Colony is at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday, September 29. Box office: 01865 305305. For more details, visit www.musictheatrewales.org.uk