WHAT BELONGS TO YOU Music Video Premieres From David T. Little Opera

A new music video, The best of me was words, was released October 1, 2026, from the world premiere recording of What Belongs to You, an opera for tenor and chamber orchestra by two-time GRAMMY Award-nominated composer David T. Little, based on Garth Greenwell's award-winning novel of the same name. The album was released June 26, 2026 on Bright Shiny Things.

Starring GRAMMY-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and GRAMMY-winning new-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, led by Alan Pierson, the recording was captured live at the 2024 world premiere production at the Modlin Center for the Arts in Richmond, Virginia, directed by Mark Morris and performed by the same artists. Winner of the 2025 MCANA Award for Best New Opera, What Belongs to You will receive its New York premiere on April 15 and 17, 2027 at NYU Skirball, featuring Sulayman, Pierson, and Alarm Will Sound.

Adapted by Little himself, What Belongs to You tells the story of a doomed love affair between an American English teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria, haunted by memories of his violently homophobic father, and a sex worker named Mitko. The opera was written for Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Pierson, who, along with Sulayman, was a classmate of Greenwell's. Alarm Will Sound celebrates its 25th anniversary season with What Belongs to You as one of the pillars of this landmark year.

In Alex Ross's liner notes for What Belongs to You, he observes that Greenwell's prose is already deeply musical. Greenwell trained as a singer growing up in Kentucky and later studied at Interlochen and Eastman, and his earliest encounters with opera were formative to his artistic development. 'My entire aesthetic compass comes from that day when I was fourteen years old and saw the Kentucky Opera production of Turn of the Screw,' Greenwell explains. Ross writes that Greenwell's prose 'rolls off the page with surging rhythm and burgeoning resonance,' creating a literary voice whose musicality both invites and challenges operatic treatment.

Little created his own libretto from Greenwell's novel with a deep reverence for the original text, 'telescoping Greenwell's prose while preserving its inner music,' as Ross writes. The score also gestures toward Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, both for its psychological resonance and as a nod to Britten's mastery of text setting – especially meaningful given Greenwell's formative experience with Britten's The Turn of the Screw.

Throughout the score, Little uses musical allusion as both commentary and expressive architecture. The opening scene, in which the American first encounters Mitko in a subterranean bathroom, quotes Monteverdi's Orfeo, evoking a descent into the underworld and foreshadowing the opera's tragic arc. Other allusions include John Dowland's 'Flow, My Tears,' especially resonant in a year marking the 400th anniversary of Dowland's death, and Schubert's Winterreise. The opera concludes with a reference to 'Der Leiermann,' the final song of Schubert's cycle, with its image of an ostracized organ-grinder playing mechanically in the snow.

Little's dramatic world extends beyond the narrator's single voice. The music itself functions as a second narrator, supplying commentary and psychological depth. Alarm Will Sound also briefly steps into the drama, embodying first Mitko and then the hateful voice of the American's father, singing in a shape-note style that Ross describes as 'strong, bright, intensely focused, and almost harsh.' As the narrator's emotional involvement evolves, so too does the work's perspective. Ross writes: 'At first, everything we hear and imagine is filtered through the American's welter of preoccupations: his desires, his fears, his hang-ups, his risk-taking, his cawing crowd of memories. In the final scene, he has stepped back, beholding Mitko's fully operatic tragedy with an artist's wide-open, if tear-stricken, eyes.'

What Belongs to You Tracklist

Disc 1

1. Mitko, I. Palace — 15:28

2. Mitko, II. Apartment — 4:29

3. Mitko, Interlude: Entre chien et loup — 0:51

4. Mitko, III. Sea — 17:19

Disc 2

1. A Grave, I. A Note — 2:00

2. A Grave, II. It Must Have Been Summer / The Orphaned Light — 4:14

3. A Grave, Interlude: Among the Blokove — 0:48

4. A Grave, III. His True Face — 3:32

5. A Grave, Interlude: A Land of Ravens and Dogs — 1:04

6. A Grave, IV. The Best of Me Was Words — 8:10

7. A Grave, V. The Wastes of Mladost — 5:57

8. A Grave, VI. Lachrimae Verae (The Flowing Stream) — 4:37

9. Pox, I. Apartment — 4:54

10. Pox, II. Two Clinics — 3:25

11. Pox, III. Like the Clicking of Metal as It Cools — 3:59

12. Pox, Interlude: Entre loup et chien — 0:48

13. Pox, IV. Earthquake — 8:04

Total time: 89:39

World premiere performance recorded live at the Modlin Center for the Arts, University of Richmond. Music and libretto by David T. Little. Based on the novel by Garth Greenwell. Featuring Karim Sulayman, Alan Pierson, and Alarm Will Sound. Label: Bright Shiny Things. Catalog No.: BSTC-0240. Cover art photography: Mark McKnight.

Video by Four/Ten Media. Produced by Gavin Chuck, Andrew McKenna Lee, David T. Little. Recording director: Alan Pierson. Mixed and Edited by Andrew McKenna Lee, Still Sound Music. Recorded live by James Seretis. Mastered by Joe Lambert. Sound Engineering by William Stanton.

About David T. Little

A natural musical storyteller with 'a knack for overturning musical conventions' (The New York Times), two-time GRAMMY Award-nominated David T. Little is a composer and producer known for stage, concert, and screen works permeated with eclectic influences and the power of the unexpected. His broad catalog probes the deep corners of human psychology, unafraid to invoke the mythical, bewitching, disturbing, surreal, or comedic in order to explore the human condition. His award-winning, internationally performed operas include Dog Days, JFK, and Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera — all with libretti by Royce Vavrek — Black Lodge, with a libretto by Anne Waldman, and Soldier Songs, Sin-Eater, and What Belongs to You, all to his own libretti. Little has been commissioned by institutions and performers including Alarm Will Sound, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, London Sinfonietta, The Crossing, Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Kennedy Center, and Beth Morrison Projects. His music has been presented by Carnegie Hall, Venice Biennale, Holland Festival, Malmö Opera, Folkoperan in Stockholm, LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opéra de Montréal, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the LA Philharmonic. Heard on such labels as New Amsterdam Records, Pentatone, Sono Luminus, Bright Shiny Things, and Cantaloupe Music, he is currently developing a new work commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, as well as several other new stage, film, and concert projects. He is the chair of the music composition department at the Mannes School of Music and is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

About Karim Sulayman

Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, praised for his 'lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma' (BBC Music Magazine). He earns widespread acclaim for his innovative programming and recording projects while performing on the world's stages in opera, orchestral concerts, recital, and chamber music. Recent engagements have included Carnegie Hall, Royal Opera House, Spoleto Festival USA, Opera Philadelphia, Wigmore Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Aldeburgh Festival, Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, Stockholm's Drottningholms Slottsteater, Houston Grand Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Chicago, New World, National, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, and the Ravinia and Schleswig-Holstein Music Festivals. In 2025 he debuted as Pelléas in a new production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at Longborough Festival Opera to critical acclaim; in 2026, he reprises his celebrated portrayal of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Houston and debuts at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He also returns to Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. Sulayman won the 2019 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for his debut solo disc, Songs of Orpheus on Avie Records. His second album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us on Avie Records with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and was included in The New York Times's Best Classical Music of 2020. His third solo album, Broken Branches on Pentatone, with guitarist Sean Shibe, debuted at #1 on the UK Classical Chart and was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. It was named one of the Best Classical Albums of 2023 by The New York Times and one of the Best Recordings of the 21st Century by BBC Radio. Sulayman was nominated for the 2026 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording for Mary Kouyoumdjian's Adoration on Bright Shiny Things.

About Alarm Will Sound

A GRAMMY-winning, 22-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today's music, Alarm Will Sound — celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding this season — has established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic virtuosity. With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. 'Stylistically omnivorous and physically versatile' (The Log Journal), the ensemble's repertoire comes from around the world and ranges from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music. The group itself includes many composer-performers, allowing for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work. Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, held each July at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where the festival features eight world premieres by early-career composers. In 2013–14, Alarm Will Sound served as artists-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ensemble may be heard on 20 recordings, including Lift, its most recent release; Land of Winter, featuring music of Donnacha Dennehy; and the premiere recording of Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite. Acoustica, the ensemble's genre-bending, critically acclaimed album, features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica artist Aphex Twin.

About Alan Pierson

GRAMMY-winning conductor Alan Pierson has been praised by The New York Times as 'a dynamic conductor and musical visionary' and by The New Yorker as 'a sensational force' with 'powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience.' He is Artistic Director and conductor of Alarm Will Sound and Co-Director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble. Pierson is passionate about realizing the dreams of living composers and treasures close relationships with David T. Little, Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, David Lang, Donnacha Dennehy, Cassandra Miller, Tyshawn Sorey, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Michael Gordon, Jlin, Ted Hearne, George Lewis, and many others. Committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, he regularly works with artists including Taylor Mac, choreographer John Heginbotham, and producer Eartheater. Pierson creates signature theatrical performances that engross audiences in deep and affecting experiences of contemporary music. In fall 2026, he leads his most ambitious project yet: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations at the Park Avenue Armory. Pierson works widely in opera, premiering major works such as David T. Little's Dog Days and leading productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Nationaltheater Mannheim, St. Ann's Warehouse, Beth Morrison Projects, LA Opera, Fort Worth Opera, EMPAC, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He served as Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 2007 to 2015 and as Principal Conductor of Dublin-based Crash Ensemble from 2006 to 2021. A sought-after guest conductor, Pierson has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and London Sinfonietta. He has released more than 30 albums and eight opera recordings and holds degrees from MIT and the Eastman School of Music.