Verdi

SOMETIME after midnight, when the almost four-hour opera "Don Carlo" had ended, one musician leaving the Lyric Opera House yelled a good-natured goodbye to another: "They ought to call this 'Verdi's Ring Cycle.'"The Baltimore Opera Company chose Verdi's longest opera, dramatic and melody-rich, to open its 41st season Saturday. Even without its original Act I, "Don Carlo" (1867) is a marathon epic using more than 100 for its plot, set in 16th century Spain. Composer Giuseppe Verdi was worried more about the entire lasting impression than he was happy about "short-lived" applause for arias.

Rossini has been both a blessing and a curse for Chris Merritt. Without the incredible vocal demands of the composer's music, Merritt, 41, probably would not have achieved fame as one of the world's most important tenors quite so early. He now enjoys the kind of celebrity that made it possible for the Baltimore Opera Company -- for which the tenor gives a benefit recital tomorrow at 3 p.m. in Shriver Hall -- to sell almost all its tickets within days of announcing their availability.Merritt's voice is such that he can hit high notes with the sort of power and grace that must have characterized the singing of Andrea Nozzari, the legendary 19th-century, Italian tenor for whom Rossini wrote some of his great parts.

For me, the true spirit of the Christmas season manifests itself in voices united in song. In that spirit, I offer some musical experiences capable of bringing home the joy of the season for one and all. For a Christmas oratorio that isn't Handel's Messiah, you might want to try L'enfance du Christ by Hector Berlioz. From 1850 through 1854, the French Romantic composer crafted sections of a choral work inspired by the Christmas story. Though somewhat lost in the seasonal shuffle these days, it is a worthy piece that deserves a listen.

Adding a multimedia dimension to a classical concert is nothing new, but an imaginative and sensitive application can still seem fresh. There was an extraordinarily compelling example over the weekend. I've heard performances of Verdi's Requiem by more seasoned choruses and orchestras, and certainly heard them in better spaces than Catholic University's Pryzbyla University Center, but none that moved me more deeply or left me more unsettled than the one given there Sunday night. Created a few years ago as "a concert drama" by Murry Sidlin, dean of CU's school of music, this Defiant Requiem - Verdi at Terezin combines a presentation of the profound score with visual and spoken documentary.

With more than 800 season subscribers and an international array of musicians and dancers on its performance roster each year, the Naval Academy's Distinguished Artists Series has become a cultural force to be reckoned with throughout the region. That will remain true in the 2004-2005 season, which begins Sept. 14 at the academy's Alumni Hall with Yuri Temirkanov conducting his Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in performances of Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahms' monumental 1st Symphony.

No one -- not even Mozart -- wrote operas more powerfully affecting than Verdi's in their presentation of fully realized human beings.When reasonably well-done, works such as "Rigoletto" strike us with a force similar to that of reading a Tolstoy novel or seeing a Shakespeare play. Human beings live and die before our eyes, and -- because it is art, not life -- we are helpless to intervene.The important thing about any production of "Rigoletto," which the Baltimore Opera Company performed Saturday at the opening of its current season at the Lyric Opera House, is that this tragic music drama must inspire the requisite pity and fear.

With hits to his credit like "Phantom of the Opera," "Cats," "Evita" and "Jesus Christ, Superstar," Andrew Lloyd Webber has probably sold more tickets than anyone else in the history of Broadway.But a decade ago, Mr. Lloyd Webber decided to set aside being a show-biz tunesmith for a time. Saddened by both the death of his father and by murderous events in Cambodia, he chose to broaden his artistic horizons and compose a Requiem, a musical setting of the Roman Catholic liturgy for the burial of dead.

Lyric Opera Baltimore is wrapping up its comfort-food season with Verdi's stirring drama of love, nastiness and misplaced loyalties, “Rigoletto.” The staging looked a little square and economical Friday night at the Modell Performing Arts Center, but it often sounded splendid; Sunday's matinee ought to be even better. In the two short years since it emerged from the ruins of the longtime Baltimore Opera Company, which folded its tent in 2009, Lyric Opera Baltimore has taken a purposely conservative path, offering standard works in mostly traditional productions.

Since its Parisian premiere 150 years ago, Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani - The Sicilian Vespers - has ranked among the also-rans of his operatic entries. Other than the overture and maybe one or two arias, the work just can't get a firm hold on the public. Some of the trouble is easily spotted. The plot creaks noisily. The music dips in quality here and there. And, even when the original third-act ballet is cut, as in Washington National Opera's new production at the Kennedy Center, the piece is not exactly concise.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that important novels are not published in December. A corresponding cliche offers that nature abhors a vacuum. Fine writing surfaces, even in December."Like A Sister," by Janice Daugharty (HarperCollins, 192 pages, $23) is a heartrending story of 13-year-old Sissy, called Sister, who bears the responsibility for her unnamed baby sister and twin hellion brothers. The year is 1956. Everyone but neglected Sissy knows "you don't sit and pinch the ends of your hair in public, or pick your nose, or scratch the ring worm on your butt."