The use of the Portuguese language in the opera Sarapalha Composers from Brazil and Portugal transited around the opera world without doing, until recently, a profound work to turn the Portuguese language into a more operatic one. The opera tradition, as far as perceived in many peripheral countries, is specially related to three languages – Italian, German and French – the operas by Puccini, Wagner, Berg and Debussy just reinforce that assumption up to the twentieth century. Although, Béla Bartók, in his opera Bluebeard´s Castle and Leoš Janáček in Jenůfa, used their languages – Hungarian and Czech – to break with this common operatic practice, introducing a specific prosody to these languages. Harry Crowl was somehow inspired by these experiences while composing his opera Sarapalha, working on similar questions related with Brazilian Portuguese. The result is an opera that uses a lyric diction and introduce the languages’ rhythmic patterns through the change of tonic syllables. These changes led to a better understanding of sung Portuguese by native speakers. A work like this is apparently unprecedented in Brazil and Portugal, according to the composer. Sarapalha was written as a short story, by João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian writer. It is a part of the book Sagarana. The author got a degree as a Medical Doctor and worked in 1930´s as a physician in remote regions of Minas Gerais, southeast of Brazil. He could meanwhile, watch most of the locals lifestyle and their use of Portuguese language in regions where the notion time was at a halt. The plot takes place in one of these far away areas and describes the relationship between the two cousins, Argerimo and Ribeiro. After a malaria epidemic, the cousins are alone and very ill in an abandoned village, situation that led them to delusion and introspection. Guimarães Rosa´s prose was perfectly represented in Harry Crowl´s musical transposition. The voices (Argermiro – tenor and Ribeiro – baritone) sing in a recitation manner faithful to the text. As it would not be convenient to make use of vocal exhibitionism, due to the intensity of the plot, the solution found by Crowl was to use the instruments – viola, oboe, English horn – to perform what could be understood as “arias”. The original chamber version’s instrumentation – accordion, viola, oboe (alternated with English horn), guitar and percussion – gives a wide variety of possibilities in uses of timbres, textures and sonorities. This ensemble, not only accompanies the singers but creates the atmosphere that involves the characters and emphasizes the emotional intensity of the plot. Sarapalha could be performed more frequently, as a chamber opera and it does not require an expensive production as most of the traditional ones - three singers, one