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At the outset of his career in 1998, his unique genre of songwriting was dubbed “popera” by a family friend — and his music does somehow encompass the catchy tune and the irrepressible rhythm of great pop within complex classical chord sequences and a Verdi-sized ambition.

It’s weird to hear this youthful gay icon — the Canadian American wunderkind who broke onto the scene in 1998 as the musical love child of Harry Nilsson and Franz Schubert, introducing an elegant style that a family friend dubbed “popera”; whose haunting cover of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” transcended its initial home on the “Shrek” soundtrack; who Elton John called “the best songwriter on the planet” — bemoaning his old age.

Miller-Heidke's song, Zero Gravity, infuses operatic style with a pop beat - some are calling it "popera" - but covers a dark subject: her post-natal depression after giving birth to son Ernie in 2016.

“Christmas Together” keeps the pealing prettiness and classical mash-ups, but in much larger formal arrangements that usually turn toward popera.

A virtuous maiden driven to murder and stalked through the night by a vengeful army, maternal love in extremis, a demon ghost and a handsome hero who, believing his One True Love is gone, has Married Another — these are just some of the elements that inform the locomotive plot of “Miss Saigon,” a creation of those mavens of grand popera Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg.