António Pinho Vargas, whose musical journey has encompassed jazz, instrumental, and film music, is now firmly established as one of Portugal’s leading classical composers. His command of large-scale form is shown in his sacred works, Requiem and Judas [8.573227]. In Os Dias Levantados (The Raised Days) he turned to opera in his exploration of the bloodless coup of 1974 that ended Portugal’s fascist regime, and to the troubled period that followed it. Through drama and memory—including the use of letters—Pinho Vargas sees the text as integral to his opera, a powerful work that further shows that, in his words, “stylistic purity is completely alien to me”.