[Composer Kaija Saariaho’s] ability to match every mood and shift in the words with music is remarkable, as is her brilliant use of the offstage chorus to add vocalization to the orchestra, and words when necessary. The score is lyrical, mysterious, powerful and hypnotic, and her melodic, arioso vocal lines ride this musical wave with intense drama.

Think of Rodolfo’s Act I aria in La Bohème, “Che gelida manina,” in which he tells Mimì, who had knocked on his garret door just moments before, all about his life. The aria is like a monologue in which melodic phrases segue into stretches of arioso writing that straddle aria and recitative.

The steamer Silveropolis was sharply and steadily cleaving the broad, placid shallows of the Sacramento River. A large wave like an eagre, diverging from its bow, was extending to either bank, swamping the tules and threatening to submerge the lower levees.

One eagre occasionally runs eight miles inland, up the River Great Ouse to Wiggenhall, where it’s known as the ‘Wiggenhall wave.’ At the distant bend in the river, there was a sudden little shrug on the water’s surface and a crease appeared. Moving slowly but steadily, the crease rolled upstream as the bore pushed its way against the flow.

[O]ne of the big New York publishers was waiting for his new book, and showing signs of impatience; and the house in Mapledale Avenue was converted into a sanctuary where the family seer might vaticinate undisturbed.

After the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when they are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and by the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which are to come.