Evil Sung Lovely

Calling all opera(tors?) creators. Floating in the ether right now is the story that ends with a man learning about, maybe even learning to love his father right before his death. "I got to know him in the end," said Lindbergh Williams, 27, of the man he lost as a small boy who was put to death as the "DC Sniper."

Could the work cross the border into horrid, off-putting taste? Of course, but that is opera. It can also stay just on the side of acceptable, sort of like the father who has his 7-year-old daughter sing along to "La donna è mobile," the boast that "Woman is fickle" sung by an evil duke in Giuseppi Verdi's Rigolletto who revels in going from femme to femme. The fact is, despite the icky irony, it's still cute to see a kid sing out.



Hopefully, those who dare to take on the story of Williams and his dad will find the balance of acceptable in the same work that portrays the horror that his father, John Allen Muhammad, wrought.