Nicholas Hytner's production of Tippett's most dramatically successful, most enduring stage work was part of Kent Opera's string of great achievements through the 1980s, before the company fell victim in 1989 to one of the periodic bouts of cultural vandalism that characterised the Arts Council's funding policy in that Thatcherite era. King Priam established Hytner as an opera director of unmistakable power and imagination, and the opera itself as a repertory piece.

In 1985, the staging was transferred to a studio and filmed for Channel 4, and it is that version, directed for TV by Robin Lough, which appears on disc now. It wears pretty well, even if the orchestral sound is a little recessed and some of the camera work distractingly arty. The performances all have a lived-in sureness, with Rodney Macann's Priam wonderfully caught in the middle of a maelstrom that is not of his making, and equally exceptional performances from Sarah Walker as Andromache, Howard Haskin as Paris and Anne Mason as Helen, the cause of all the trouble. A worthy memento of an important production and a much-missed opera company.