Music: Nightmare at the Opera

The reassuring thing about most grand opera is that nobody is ever left long in doubt as to who the villain is—or what he is after. A modern school of opera composition prefers another proposition: nobody is sure of anything. The plots of this school usually have the random malevolence of nightmares; the singing line often gets lost among the soliloquies. Such an opera made its U.S. debut last week in Manhattan's City Center: The Trial, by Viennese Composer Gottfried von Einem, based on Franz Kafka's famed nightmare of the same name.*

The Trial had...