Philip Venables’s “4.48 Psychosis,” which is based on the late Sarah
Kane’s 2000 play and runs through Jan. 12 at the Baruch Performing Arts
Center, is a marquee offering at the Prototype Festival,
a two-week showcase that sets the pace for contemporary opera in New
York City. The piece externalizes the private agony of depression: a
cast of identically dressed women gives voice to the protagonist’s
despair through vocal glissandos, eerie harmonies, and claustrophobic
gasps against a backdrop of buzzing and fractured sounds.