Written in a conservative, neo-Romantic idiom, these works use a musical language that Strauss, Puccini, or Barber (or the oft-mentioned influence, Menotti) would have found comfortable, spiced at times with Bartók and the occasional taste of Hollywood, where he made his living for two decades. No new compositional ground is broken here, but in truth that isn’t what matters, since he does something more valuable: he tells the story with the music instead of simply adding music to the story. It is an important distinction. Pasatieri, judging from this offering, never forgets that opera is a lyric, not a declamatory, art form.