Warrior Prince From India Wrestles With Destiny

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Composers of the current generation from all stylistic camps view categories as pointlessly limiting. Why shouldn’t they borrow from any musical tradition they choose to?

Douglas J. Cuomo, for one, takes that stance in “Arjuna’s Dilemma,” an opera with an appealing and unabashedly eclectic score, based on the Bhagavad-Gita and presented at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night. The production, directed by Robin Guarino, was the first full staging of this unconventional 70-minute work, which was developed over nearly eight years.

Mr. Cuomo has written music for classical ensembles, theater, film and television (notably the effervescent, salsa-tinged theme song to “Sex and the City”). In composing “Arjuna’s Dilemma” he immersed himself in North Indian music. The score boldly blends those Indian sources with diverse contemporary music idioms and hints of jazz. There is a risk in drawing from disparate musical styles, and stretches of the piece fall into a stylistic nowhere land. Still, Mr. Cuomo’s enthusiasm for the music that inspired him is so palpable that the score’s flat spots hardly matter.

The opera tells of a crisis for Arjuna, a young warrior prince of ancient India, during a civil war. On the eve of the battle against those who usurped his throne, Arjuna rides with his charioteer, the god Krishna, to size up the enemy and realizes that among the soldiers are many of his relatives, friends and teachers.

The opera dramatizes the philosophical dilemma that Arjuna faces. Krishna explains that the coming battle is Arjuna’s destiny, that bodily life is impermanent, and that we are all on a path to discovering our immutable selves. With regret but resolve, Arjuna embraces his destiny and heads into battle.

Arjuna is portrayed by the tenor Tony Boutté in a vulnerable and anguished performance. As he sings in Sanskrit, titles of key phrases are projected against a back wall of Donald Eastman’s set, which has a raised platform where most of the action takes place and a staircase leading down to the stage where the musicians are grouped to one side.

Arjuna’s vocal lines, a stylistic blend of Indian chant and Western lyricism, are enriched by a chorus of five women, singing in English. There are touches of Philip Glass in the choral writing, especially when the women latch onto a phrase and repeat words obsessively. I liked the score best when Mr. Cuomo pushed the complexity to extremes, piling up Arjuna’s solos, choral counterpoint and instrumental textures to create haunting, astringent, multilayered music, with cluster chords in the electric keyboard and spiraling flights in the strings and winds.

In an inventive stroke Krishna is portrayed by an agile, compelling and mostly silent actor, John Kelly. The voice of Krishna is provided by the Afghan-born singer and musician Humayun Khan, who sits atop a platform playing the harmonium and other instruments and sings melismatic, earthy vocal lines in the Indian classical music tradition, including stretches of improvisation.

Also crucial to the score’s visceral allure is Badal Roy, who plays the tablas, Indian hand drums. In crucial episodes of the work he takes off on solo improvised flights, playing streams of percolating cyclic rhythms so eerily pitched that they sound almost like vocal lines.

Mr. Cuomo’s designation of “Arjuna’s Dilemma” as a contemporary chamber opera is as apt as any. Still, it is doubtful that the audience that gave an ardent ovation on Wednesday cared much about categories.