For some years now, a small group of songwriters has been championed as the hope of the American musical theater -- so much so that one of the vaunted handful, William Finn, was compelled to write a satirical song about the situation. Last season, as if to prove that the huzzahs weren't merely hype, Adam Guettel unveiled at Lincoln Center the gorgeous Light in the Piazza, which he'd taken nine years to prepare. And now the much-faster-working Michael John LaChiusa has finally composed the impeccable tuner that cognoscenti have been awaiting with waning patience.

Bernarda Alba is an adaption with truncated title of Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba. Directed and cho[...]