Dear Abby, I dearly love my husband Bob, who owns his own filling station and works like a dog to make a go of it. Our problem is his no-good sponge of a little brother, Nate. Bob promised their Mom on her deathbed that he’d put Nate through college, and he did. A year later, Nate’s still hanging around my kitchen, waiting to “find himself” and making goo-goo at yours truly. What do I do? (Signed) HAD IT UP TO HERE… In Highway 1, William Grant Still (1895–1978), known as the “doyen of Black composers,” wraps Mary’s kitchen-sink predicament in singable, sincere music that doesn’t touch the heartstrings but doesn’t overdramatize. Heading the second professional production in the opera’s history, Norman Garrett and Nicole Heaston are Bob and Mary, with Chaz’men Williams-Ali as the no-count Nate. After intermission, it’s off to the Spanish court, where a spoiled Infanta (Erica Petrocelli) toys mercilessly with her human birthday present, a Dwarf (Rodrick Dixon). The cruel conceit is Oscar Wilde’s, the bespangled music is by Alexander Zemlinsky, a late-Romantic close to Brahms and Schoenberg. Zemlinsky’s staunch and very able champion James Conlon conducts both halves of the unusual bill. —Matthew Gurewitsch