"Sumeida's Song" is an intensely dramatic 60-minute four-character opera with a searing score that deftly draws from Arabic and Western contemporary musical sources.
July 25-29 at 9: In "The Full Monteverdi," the British vocal ensemble I Fagiolini performs the composer's Fourth Book of Madrigals as a six-character opera, moving among the audience at the intimate Kaplan Penthouse.
Mr. Kelly has long dabbled in theater; he teamed with Ronald Isley for the Mr. Biggs saga, and he has recorded a multi-character opera version of one of his own biggest hits, "I Believe I Can Fly".
Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called Sumeida's Song "an intensely dramatic 60-minute four-character opera with a searing score…The Arabic elements of his style – microtonal modes, spiraling dance rhythms, plaintive melodic writing – give fresh, distinctive jolts to the Western elements".
Depending on how you look at it, "Three Lost Chords" is a single work in three loosely related acts, or three short, single-character operas yoked together.
For eagerness of anticipation, sheer excitement and musical splendor, no character in opera has an entrance like that of Lohengrin, the knight sent to rescue the falsely accused Elsa.
Though Billy is the title character, the opera revolves around the decent but essentially weak Captain Vere, whom we first meet in old age, still haunted by the events that forced him to sanction Billy's death by hanging.
Iro, perhaps "the first great comic character in opera", opens his Act 3 monologue with a wail of distress that stretches across eight bars of music.
Ira hated the precious literary names that people gave pets — characters from opera and Proust.
The English bass-baritone Peter Rose brings a formidable voice and blustery energy to Claggart, one of the most elusive characters in opera.
Though she was never her most comfortable high up, she transformed the coloratura of roles like Rossini's Ermione into unforgettable characters, capturing opera's grand suspension between naturalism and stylization.
