Robert Wyatt

Comicopera is a beautifully nuanced work that sustains mood and symmetry over three acts despite its breadth of emotional exploration. Wyatt inhabits complex and challenging characters while creating a piece that begs uninterrupted listening. Act 1, "Lost in Noise," presents a narrow, haunted color palette, while the middle six songs, "The Here and the Now," are brighter, until he sings, "You have planted your everlasting hatred in my heart" at act's close. In "Away with the Fairies," the final four songs, he eschews English altogether, singing in Italian and Spanish.