declamation

In 1966, the Met premiered Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra," a Shakespeare-inspired spectacle that was panned by the New York Times as an "artifice with a great flourish masquerading as art," producing music that "abounded in declamation and pageantry" but failed to explore the subject — love between a man and woman — and couldn't be saved by Leontyne Price singing at the peak of her powers.

He stretched language and banality to operatic extremes, exalting discarded bits of life as if they were cosmic, in stylized declamation that is every bit as musical as Mozart.

His most signature declamation is “AaaaahhhhI”

But the whole show is well cast and performed, and even when the action feels overly constructed or declamatory — and there is a rash of declamation toward the season’s end — there is something or someone pleasing to latch onto.

As this druid high priestess, caught in a forbidden love triangle with a Roman soldier and a fellow priestess, Yoncheva can be forceful in declamation — the singing that’s more like speechifying.