David T. Little’s opera ‘What Belongs to You’ opens with a lurching piano solo that cues up Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman portraying an American teacher recounting his anguished memory of his hook-up in a public lavatory in Sofia, Bulgaria–an encounter that turned into a torrid affair with sex worker Mitko. Over three acts, Sulayman relives his torrid affair in an off-the cliff performance.
The opera is based on the eponymous, award winning novel by Garth Greenwell, turned into a three part mono-opera. There are distinct echoes of Francis Poulenc’s “La Voix humaine” (1958) in its emotional intensity, nuance and vocal demands. Little’s opera is similarly with feral emotions, but, unlike Poulenc, sans any euphemistic lyrics.
The teacher confesses his love for Mitko with even though he knows this is little more than just a desperate hook-up for both men. Little’s operatic verite ignites his libretto with the tragic dynamics of Greenwell novel.
Conductor Alan Pierson leads the 16 piece orchestra Alarm Will Sound’s detailing of Little’s score, with entrancing operatic and nuanced musicality. The character Mitko never appears, though his dialogue is delivered in the choral vocalese by the musicians
The premiere run was directed and choreographed by choreographer Mark Morris in 2024 at the Modlin Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond VA, and the live recording of that production is now out on the Bright Shiny Things label.
Morris told NYT’s music journalist Joshua Barone he was” he initially worried about taking on the opera, because “it might be too ‘boo hoo, I’m gay.’” But Morris quickly found himself thrilled by the story and score and his inspired physical theater choreography for Karim Sulayman was widely admired.
The Teacher is on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he receives a letter from his family that his father was seriously ill and they want him to return home. The news triggers painful memories of his father and the sexual abuse he endured, and dredging up the long buried mixed emotions around his father’s abuse that was masked with tenderness.
The lyrics of this scene is riveting in its verisimilitude~ Allowing me to make of him what I would’ ‘Hating my shame’ Conflicted emotions that still feel unresolved as he laments- ’It would have been summer//my father lay beside me// remembering episodes both gentle and cruel and drove me toward him.’
Even as feral woodwinds lace through the basso piano expressing his emotional realities, Sulayma’n’s voice cuts through staccato trumpet riffs, a distant violin articulate desperate memories of an abusive father masking a sexual assault with grotesque tenderness.
The ambient, noirish music keeps the seething emotions just under the surface, but soon enough calm gives way to a rapacious aria delivered with cliff-hanging power by Sulayman’s tenor range in a tour de force performance.
“What Belongs to You” is relatively new gay story territory for opera. Of course in opera, female prostitutes have been tragic stock characters for centuries. For GLBTQ audiences the story of ‘tainted hustler love’ is also well worn queer turf starting with John Rechy’s ‘City of Night’ to the 70s movie ‘Cruising’ and the slate of 90s gay film festivals were flush with hustler/john dramas. Both Greenwell’s novel and this opera are much more than the stock in trade.
