On the evening of November 12, on the east side of Broadway, across from Lincoln Center, outside the Mormon Temple, a large and vocal LGBT crowd demonstrated against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for its fervent and extravagant financial support for California Proposition 8, constitutionally repealing the short-lived right of same sex couples to marry. On the west side of Broadway, at the Juilliard School, a triple bill of short operas opened, offering an exceedingly dim view of heterosexual marriage, making for an interesting juxtaposition of events.

Modest Mussorgsky's dark comedy fragment "Zhenitba" (The Marriage), after Nikolay Gogol, completed by Alexander Tcherepnin, concerns two clients of a marriage broker, one who procrastinates about making any commitment and the other, his friend, who is dissatisfied with the match made for him. In Ernst Krenek's sprightly farce "Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation" (Heavyweight, or the Pride of the Nation), a boxer's wife and her lover-and dance partner for a Charleston marathon-successfully outwit the dumb heavyweight champion. And in Benjamin Fleischmann's "Skripka Rotshilda" (Rothschild's Violin), after Anton Chekov, completed by Dmitri Shostakovich, a coffin-maker, coming to the realization that his unappreciated wife of half-a-century is dying, coolly, matter-of-factly prepares a coffin for her. The Juilliard Opera Center had presented the American premiere production of Fleischmann's opera on February 23, 25 and 27, 1990.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power in Germany and this week, the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom which takes its name from the shattered glass of windows of vandalized synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses, and a number of musical programs have been planned to commemorate these grim anniversaries. One musician who has been behind many efforts to recover lost or forgotten music of this era has been James Conlon, who conceived and conducted this intense and intermissionless trilogy. Krenek was forced to flee his native Austria for the United States when the Nazis outlawed his compositions as Entartete (degenerate) Musik and Fleischmann, who joined the Russian army to fight the Nazis, perished at the front.

Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang persuasively took principal roles of Podkolyosin, the heaviness of his music apt for this couch potato, in "The Marriage," and Yakov Matveeeyevich Ivanov AKA Bronza, who expressed remorse for his coldness, tentatively, in a lyrical aria and ultimately, in an agitated epiphany, in "Rothschild," with the full cast of the trilogy joining him in seeing the light, in Darko Tresnjak and James Marvel's realization. Mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum made a vivid Fyokla Ivanovna, the matchmaker, costumed by Linda Cho as a kind of Carmen figure in red and black. Tenor Nicholas Coppolo was commanding in aggressive roles in each of the operas: Kochkarev, who dismisses the matchmaker and assumes control of Podkolyosin's courting plans himself; a journalist, who pesters the boxer with questions beyond his ken; and Moisei Ilyich Shakhes, the gravedigger, who leads the wedding band in which Bronza plays violin and Rothschild, whom Bronza bullies, the flute. Baritone Nicholas Pallesen gamely portrayed Stepan, Podkolyosin's hapless, flatulent-for so the music and staging tell us-valet and supporting roles in the other two operas.

Merry music opens Krenek's farce and apt cartoon and fast-paced newsreel figures were projected in Jonathan Estabrooks' video montage. Baritone Paul La Rosa played the boneheaded athlete Ochsenschwantz (Oxtail) with flair. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan, so moving as Emily in Ned Rorem and J.D. McClatchy's "Our Town" in the spring, lent a silvery voice and perky presence to the part of Evelyne, the boxer's flapper wife. Tenor Paul Appleby played, with distinction, the contrasting roles of Gaston, Evelyne's chipper lover, who rigs Ochsenschwantz's exercise machine so that he gets trapped in it, and Rothschild, the poor, meek Jewish musician, who shares a name with the wealthy banking family, and winds up with Ivanov's precious violin, when the coffin-maker repents. Soprano Frédérique Vézina cut a fittingly dippy figure as Anna Maria, a medical student and horny Ochsenschwantz groupie. Jane Monari doubled as Podkolyosin's graceful intended and Ochsenschwantz's maid, who breezed across the floor en pointe carrying the boss' weighty barbell. Polynesian tenor Ta'u Pupu'a made a meal of the fussy bel canto parody of the government minister's announcement to the prizefighter that he would represent the country in the next Olympics.

Mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne was Ivanov's long-suffering wife, Marfa, who vied with a boisterous wedding party and her Scrooge-like spouse's mutterings about his trade-people dying infrequently or outside his bailiwick-to make her dire situation known.

Kudos for making this unusual trilogy a satisfying experience go principally, but not exclusively to Conlon, and also to director Marvel, set designer David P. Gordon, and the rest of the production team. Remaining performances of the Juilliard Opera Center's trilogy are on November 14 at 8 p.m. and 16 at 2 p.m. and tickets at $20 are available at the Juilliard box office, at Lincoln Center, at 155 West 65th Street or, through CenterCharge, by calling 212/751-6500.