This operatic tale of entangled attractions takes on another dimension when the count is as seductive as Mr. Mattei.

A lusty operatic tale in which Eva Marton sings with searing intensity and the conductor sustains tension throughout.

"Epochal" is all too confining a term for this wildly operatic tale, set in 1242, that glorifies Russia's liberation from invading Teutonic knights and had a strong resonance in 1938 with Hitler and the Germans again threatening from the west.

These days, "Ermione, " Rossini's operatic tale of shattered love and violence in the wake of the Trojan War, is like an exotic bird.

The orchestra's purpose, though, is to heighten the theatricality of the voices in what is, after all, a very operatic tale of love and betrayal in the life of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, the 16th-century Italian composer who killed his wife and her lover.

Yes, it is a simple operatic tale, which turns on exotic, forbidden love; yes, it is a story of Jews versus Christians drawn from historical annals.

In "The Godfather," Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 operatic tale of an Italian-American Mafia family, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) certainly bestows on his children the fruits of his crimes, making them rich and powerful.

But since its premiere in 1896, audiences have hardly lacked opportunities to experience this operatic tale of ill-fated love among a band of impoverished, defiantly joyful Parisian bohemians in the early days of King Louis Philippe's reign.

In 1936, soon after the premiere of George Gershwin's operatic tale of black lovers in downtrodden Catfish Row, The New York World-Telegram published an article headlined, "Negroes Are Critical of Porgy and Bess."

Another year, another "Amahl," as the Little Orchestra Society presents its 23rd annual performance of Gian Carlo Menotti's popular operatic tale of a handicapped boy who is cured by a miracle.