But as with too much contemporary American opera, the vocal lines, stranded between speaking and singing, dissonance and tonal lyricism, leave sen-TEN-ces with odd, stil-TED STRESS-es.
In his drive to bring avant-garde music to the attention of the largest possible audience, he achieved a remarkably consistent mixture with extremely diverse ingredients, pulling in free jazz, classical, cutting-edge contemporary, ethnic, vocal and meditative strands.
Carter's vocals pull the strands together in commanding fashion.
Each strand of the vocal line is punctuated by some perfect short gesture: cello pizzicatos and a smattering of harp; a four-note horn solo; a vaguely Balinese rustling of mallet percussion and string glissandos.
Mr. Kurtag confidently draws from diverse styles: gnashing atonality, wistful tonal lyricism, evocations of solo violin music from Bach to Bartok, vocal writing that shifts from earthy strands of folk tunes to skittish bursts of Bergian intensity.
Precise beats and bleeps frame dreamy strands of piano; gentle, unprocessed vocals cut through the prickliest computer music.
Several thousand Bangladeshi workers are also stranded at the border, and are equally vocal in denouncing their own government and embassy for inaction.
His vocal writing, although clearly within the stream of German Expressionism, convincingly renders the untutored Caribbean ex-slave, his passions and his strands of simple wisdom, his fears and his dreams.
Airlines have been less vocal about other provisions of proposed rights laws, like ones that require food, water, ventilation and working toilets for stranded passengers.
