The American composer Leonardo Balada was born in Barcelona in 1933. His one-act opera, Hangman, Hangman! is freely adapted from an American cowboy folk-song. Johnny, its hero, is a dreamer who has been apprehended for stealing a horse, and is about to be hanged. The Town of Greed, in two parts, is a sequel to Hangman, Hangman! and presents the same principal characters but twenty years later. In both operas abrasive contemporary orchestral sonorities co-exist with highly melodic vocal lines. As in a cartoon, the characters and issues are presented in an irreverent manner, direct and with bullet-like sharpness and directness.