Schoenberg: Heute Morgen

Plot: The whole production is less that an hour in length, with a cast of just four singers plus a child who walks on to speak a few words; it's effectively a "chamber opera" in length but considerably larger in musical ambition, not a score you'll go home whistling, rather one that will absorb all the attention you can give it and then compel you to hear it again. For music of such complexity and intensity, the brevity of this opera is just right; you could take it as five hours of Verdi or Wagner concentrated and crystalized in one hour of Schoenberg.