Von Ewiger Liebe was rapt and ecstatic, her voice sounding glorious over its full dynamic range.
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First up in an eclectic list – "mainly ecstatic female voices with a few queens thrown in" – is Marc Almond, whom Hegarty has persuaded to appear in his Marc and the Mambas incarnation, the side project of his Soft Cell years.
The dancing also brings a hallucinatory visual clarity to Glass's score, so that you can almost see the ecstatic soprano voices, the clanging cascades of organ notes falling into bright, shining patterns in front of your eyes.
Describing the lineup as "mainly ecstatic female voices with a few queens thrown in", it was clear each performer – from Marc Almond to CocoRosie to Liz Fraser – was selected based on their relation to Antony's life and/or their implied role in what Antony calls the promotion of "future feminism".
In curating the event, the New York singer has chosen artists who he feels embrace "oestrogen-based thinking", and summarises the bill he has assembled – primarily art-pop with the emphasis heavily on the first syllable – as "mainly ecstatic female voices, with a few queens thrown in".
When asked how he felt, he replied, in a barely audible voice: "Ecstatic.
No matter that the singer was huge and almost immobile, his beard blackened with burnt cork and his face running with sweat mopped away with an enormous white handkerchief; the smile was ecstatic, and the voice was from heaven.
The three remaining members and Jason Bonham, deputising on drums for his late father, take the stage to a reception so ecstatic that a cynical voice might suggest they may as well immediately turn round and go home, their performance having clearly been taken as read.
