Giving Whole New Meaning To “Crossover”

The East Village Opera Company is almost guaranteed to make purists groan, but the bare-bones company has suddenly become the talk of New York. “It features [two vocalists], a seven-piece rock band and a string quartet… They take classic operatic arias and perform them to rock grooves with electrifying results. Are you ready for a version of ‘La Donna E Mobile’ that winds up feeling a lot like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? You may not think so, but it works amazingly well and the group’s debut CD on Universal is already causing ripples in both the classical and rock music scenes.”