Prize-winning French composer Laurent Petitgirard has written accomplished music in many forms, notably symphonic and music for film and television, but it is as an operatic composer that he has received perhaps the greatest acclaim. His opera on the subject of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man [Naxos CD 8.557608–09 / Marco Polo DVD 2.220001] was hailed as “a compelling and moving score—the composer’s melodic gift is very much his own” (Sunday Telegraph). Guru, completed in 2009, is a work of similar stature. Ostensibly it concerns mass suicides in a cult, reminiscent of the 1978 Jonestown suicides, but Petitgirard’s pleas for humanity, and against manipulation, are expressed with tremendous, very personal power, and compelling theatrical immediacy.