VOX 2004: SHOWCASING AMERICAN COMPOSERS WEDS. & THUR., MAY 26 & 27 ...

SHOWCASING

AMERICAN COMPOSERS

WEDS. & THUR., MAY 26 & 27

OKAY, CONFESSION: I've logged my share of hours in gilded concert halls, but still, like most people, when I hear the word "opera," I think of those badly filmed stagings they run on PBS on Sunday afternoons. And then I think of Cher crying over La Bohéme in the movie Moonstruck.

The point is that opera is not something most of us give a lot of thought to these days. And if and when we do, what's likely to come to mind is too much vibrato, too much velvet and ticket prices that equal our share of the rent.

So a few things caught my attention about the NYC Opera VOX 2004 fest of hot-off-the-press American operas to be presented at Symphony Space over the next couple of days. The list of composers participating runs the style gamut, and each name carries enough experience to guarantee that this will not devolve into an amateur endeavor. Then, the icing: Tony Morrison wrote the libretto for the first opera on the preview show-Richard Danielpour's Margaret Garner.

But it's when I get to the synopsis of the various works that I'm reminded that even if we don't get to see "new" opera very often, we've come a very long way from the tragic tuberculosis-suffering heroine. In addition to the Danielpour/Morrison work based on a fugitive slave's life, the lineup for VOX 2004 includes operas based around modern people and modern situations: the Holocaust victim Janusz Korczak (Adam Silverman/Susan Gubernat); the poems of Alan Ginsberg (Elodie Lauten); a therapy session about a romance gone wrong (Daniel Felsenfeld/Ernest Hilbert); an insane reverend-founder of the People's Temple (John Eaton/James Reston, Jr.); the longest-held POW in Vietnam and his life after his release (Tom Cipullo); a Vietnam vet who attached weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated out of L.A. (Donald Hagar/John Burns).

And also what is now my own personal, all-time favorite opera plot, real or imagined: a professional dominatrix "pausing between clients to muse about a U.S. president, her hopes and dreams about him." (Jennifer Griffith)

If you're still on the fence, it's free, so no financial commitment is required. I'll be skipping work for it. Tell your boss the spreadsheets can wait-you're going to get some American culture. It's almost a patriotic duty.

Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Symphony Space, 2537 B'way (95th St.), 212-864-1414, 2, free.