The convoluted plots and the conventions of the opera seria style, with their long da capo (repeat) arias, were thought to make them unperformable.

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The W is also centrally located next to the exquisite Beaux-Arts-style Opera Palais Garnier (ask for a room with a view of it) and easy access to several Metro lines.

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The stunning banality of the libretto, by Mr. Wainwright and Bernadette Colomine, reaches its apex here, with lines like "Your beauty intoxicates me, " while Tim Albery's directing of this opera-within-an-opera references old-fashioned stand-and-deliver style at its most wooden.

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Educated in the States at Georgetown Prep, Yale and Columbia (where he earned his masters in architecture), he had season tickets to the opera in his twenties and was taken under the wing of Deeda Blair, the style icon, public health advocate and noted D.

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"Tahrir, " an ornamented singing style that resembles yodeling, gave the vocal parts an intriguingly Eastern flavor while still sounding like Western opera, and emphasized the uncertainty and anguish of the arias.

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