Ara Berberian In 1963 he was promoted from the chorus to singing roles with the NYCO, beginning with Leandro in "The Love for Three Oranges" in April of that year. He sang several more roles with NYCO through 1967, including Collatinus in "The Rape of Lucretia", the Commandant in "Don Giovanni", the Major-Domo in "Capriccio", Osmin in Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio", and Tiresias in "Oedipus rex" among others. He later returned to the NYCO in 1977 to create the role of Gene Henderson in the world premiere in Leon Kirchner's "Lily". From 1965-1968 Berberian was committed to the San Francisco Opera,
Seraglio Seraglio A seraglio ( or ) or serail is the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in an Ottoman household. The term "harem" is a generic term for domestic spaces reserved for women in a Muslim family, which can also refer to the women themselves. The Ottoman imperial harem was known in Ottoman Turkish as "Harem-i Hümâyûn". The etymology of this Italian word is unclear. The Italian Treccani dictionary gives two derivations: one from Turkish "saray", from Persian "sarai" (), meaning "palace", or the enclosed courts for the wives and concubines of the harem of a house or