Performer: New York City Opera

In the Brokeback Mountain, Wuorinen's  powerfully depicts the stern landscapes, the omnipresent menace, the desolate life of the characters and their awkward interactions.

Whenever a relative opera novice or occasional toe-dipper tells me how he or she cried at the end of La bohème, I want to send them to La fanciulla del West. Of course I choke up at the end of Bohème – who doesn't? – but for a good bawling session, the fabulously maudlin finale of Fanciulla is the place to be. The plot doesn't bode well.

Fallujah, a chamber opera exploring the Iraq War and post-traumatic stress disorder, makes a powerful impression in its East Coast première. 

A rare pairing of Rachmaninov's Aleko and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci was the first première of the New York City Opera's 2016-2017 season.

Musically inoffensive, the soaring Romanticism further makes sense given the story, in which a cast of García-Márquezian characters float down the Amazon River on a steamboat rife with passion and yearning.

During the opening night of Anna Nicole at BAM, I found myself experiencing a case of déjà vu. New York City Opera was electrifying the Howard Gilman Opera House with a work by a living composer featuring the salacious story of a female protagonist whose life was splashed across tabloids, and at one point even featuring an act of fellatio with the disjointed music carrying on in the background.