But he delivered a darkly affecting account of the central aria, "Che farò." The young Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska as Eurydice showed off her buttery, room-filling, emotionally pointed voice; Heidi Grant Murphy made for an aggressively charming Amor, at one point maintaining pitch while being dangled fifty feet in the air.
She has a small, pointed voice, and in the songs on her debut album, "Youth Novels" (LL), she sings in slurred, charmingly accented English -- "Little Bit" becomes "likkle bih" -- about shyness and desire: "Having troubles tellin' how I feel/But I can dance, dance, dance".
Suzanne Vega's songs, by contrast, are as clear and pointed as her voice, with a way of refracting large emotions through finely noted details.
Her voice, pointed and resolute with a tearful edge, makes them sound confessional as they take on finding love and respect, dealing with a broken heart and trying again.
Chinese officials have voiced pointed public worries about the effect of America's massive fiscal and monetary expansion on the value of China's dollar holdings.
By July 2008, a second hearing on the City Council's proposal drew such a crowd that the meeting was moved to the high school auditorium (for the first time in memory) and the large crowd (under the watch of the police) voiced pointed views on all sides.
Ed Balls made similar noises in Sunday's Sun, and voiced pointed opposition in the Commons on Monday – though his focus was almost exclusively on people in work, which threatens to leave arguably the bill's most iniquitous elements outside the debate.
Rosie Flores sang in a wry, girlish voice and played pointed guitar solos.
With his high, pensive, admonitory voice and his pointed guitar picking, Mr. Staples was a link between the Delta blues and the thoughtful soul songs of Curtis Mayfield.
But that movie was made at a time — the late 1990's — when its cynical paranoia could feel fresh and pointed rather than one more voice in a weary chorus.
Historically, quirkier indie acts have progressed to a "classic" instrumentation as a cover for less lovable eccentricities (Conor Oberst's feverish over-emoting, say), but Friedberger's embrace of warm Dylan-esque arrangements only serves to throw her pointed domestic observations and strong voice into sharper relief.
