Opera

A dominatrix, an android companion – an opera? 'Three Way' zeroes in on the now and the near future of power and sexuality. Ahead of its NYC premiere, we talk with the composer, and debut a video excerpt.

Floyd's music mixes modernist dissonance with classic lyricism, a recipe that the composer-librettist has mastered and fine-tuned perhaps better than anyone else.

In one of the show's most emblematic moments, Asad's friends recoil when he sticks to his principles and accepts a cup of tea from a woman of what they see as an inferior clan. This operatic true tale from South Africa of a Somali refugee's harrowing journey of survival resonates ringingly in today's Europe and America.

Why does the opera call these educated and thoughtful Peruvian revolutionaries "terrorists"?

Joseph Keckler, a bass-baritone with a three-and-a-half-octave vocal range, stretches boundaries like a psychedelic dream.

W.H. Auden called Oscar Wilde's great farcical comedy "the only pure verbal opera in English." Composer Gerald Barry and The Royal Opera have taken that idea and run with it.

Glorious music and wonderful singing more than compensate for a weak story in this comic opera by the first classical composer of African ancestry.

Lovingly reconstructed, this aspirational-fantasy story of Russian shtetl Jews emigrating to America is a fascinating period piece of great historical and cultural interest, as well as a robustly acted and brilliantly sung spectacle of theatrical joy.

Forceful, wrenching, and thought-provoking, 'Glory Denied' with a number of productions under its belt still deserves further exposure in our age of constant war, with the lessons of Vietnam yet to be learned. It should be considered one of the major operas of the 21st century so far.

Voices simulate the ringing of bells and the knocking-on of doors as effectively as they convey the desperation of foiled lovers, the comic scheming of the servant class, and the self-satisfied prancing of the smug.