What Belongs to You
David T. Little’s opera, after the novel by Garth Greenwell — New York premiere
Adapted from Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, the opera follows an American teacher living in Sofia and his years-long entanglement with a young hustler named Mitko. It begins as a transaction in the bathrooms beneath the National Palace of Culture and returns, again and again, to the same two people — through recollection of a childhood the narrator has tried to leave behind, through illness, through the distance neither man can close.
Little wrote all of it for one voice. Karim Sulayman, winner of the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, sings the role written for him, alone on stage for the length of the opera. He is directed by Mark Morris, a MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Mark Morris Dance Group, who staged the work’s 2024 world premiere and whom the New York Times has called “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical.”
Alan Pierson conducts Alarm Will Sound, the ensemble that co-commissioned the opera and gave its premiere, and which won its first Grammy Award in February 2026 for Donnacha Dennehy’s Land of Winter. Scored for solo tenor and chamber orchestra, the opera moves in discrete scenes rather than continuous action: images appear, register, and give way, with the audience left to draw the connections between them.
What Belongs to You received the 2025 Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera. The recording was released in June 2026 on Bright Shiny Things.
Press
“…a major work by a composer at the top of his game.”
— Musical America
“The music is wonderful. Suffused with layer upon layer of interfolded melodic lines and gorgeous sonic combinations…”
— Opera
“Little’s music is extraordinary… expressive, imaginative, and gripping.”
— San Francisco Classical Voice
“[Alarm Will Sound] seems to be able to handle anything. And they do.”
— Gramophone
“…tender, lyric, and full of heartbreak.”
— Parterre Box
“…conveys the chaos of adult desire and the traumas of gay childhood.”
— Music Critics Association of North America, 2025 Best New Opera citation