Mr. Woo's sense of tragedy may be cartoonish at times, but its intensity and its sincerity are unmistakable, whether in goofy, borderline self-parodic films like "Hard-Boiled," in florid action operas like "Bullet in the Head" and its American cousin "Windtalkers," or in the somewhat more dignified costume-epic setting of "Red Cliff".
CHARLESTON, S.C., June 3 — There are operas of action and operas of stasis.
The topography of the Breslin — shrouded banquettes; a large oval table for groups; a balcony with a few tables that overlook the action, like opera boxes — is purposely higgledy-piggledy.
The protagonist of the second half of Wagner's four-part epic, "Der Ring des Nibelungen," Siegfried enters the action in the opera that bears his name, proceeding to his tragic end in the concluding opera, "Gotterdammerung," which Mr. Andersen sings on April 22, to complete the Met's first cycle of the season.
"We had to learn action at the opera studio.
Soul-searching arias about injustice, love, homesickness and vengeance substitute for action in this opera, which is distinguished by Verdi's use of leitmotifs to accompany each character.
The dearth of apparent action through the opera's two hours is mirrored in the illusion of musical stagnation, by now a trademark of Ms. Saariaho's music.
And Mr. Lee appears to have a taste for prime-time genre fare — soap opera, action thrillers, fantasy, horror — without the jokey, self-reflexive humor of an earlier generation of ABC shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Ugly Betty" and "Pushing Daisies".
One scholar has argued that this startling new language helped to create a more "active" mode of listening, in which audiences learned to follow an instrumental narrative as they would the action of an opera.
That's an awfully long shadow to be caught in, though the overall animation of "Futurama," featuring a multitude of interstellar landscapes and copious space opera action, has been among the most complex and beautiful on television.
The elaborate set by Robert Innes Hopkins depicts a minutely detailed ship on which the entire action of the opera takes place, and it accommodates the many choristers who portray the sailors and sing the score's choral episodes dynamically.
