Guillaume Tell

A tyrant sets the apple on the boy's head and hands the bow to the boy's father. Everything in the role bends toward that single arrow — the marksman who cannot afford to be a parent in the instant he is most a parent.

"Sois immobile" is not really sung to Jemmy. It is sung to myself — hold still, kneel, look down — a command for steadiness disguised as instruction, the solo cello breathing under each line while the voice climbs to that bare cry of his name. I carry the whole act in how little the hand is allowed to shake.

The writing is grand-opera scale: long lyrical paragraphs, a noble weight that never tips into bombast. Tell is a leader, a husband, a marksman, and for four bars only a frightened man — and the line has to hold all of them at once.