Diamanda Galas performed her epic homage to the AIDS pandemic last October at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. This major production was a culmination of almost five years of grinding work conceived at Hunters Point here in San Francisco.

Galas performed segments of this piece at last year's International Conference on AIDS. Diamanda's losses are like many others—exhaustive. She reports that over 50 percent of her friends have tested positive, her brother Philip Dimitri Galas (the creator of Mona Rogers) died soon after she began the piece, her friends and colleagues in the art and performance world have all lost their lives. This toll is needless; Diamanda asserts that these casualties are the consequence of inaction, rather than inevitable. Galas' violent and raw production is an epic of devastation aimed at underscoring the ferocious sadness and injustice of the AIDS crisis.

Controversy has always shadowed Diamanda's work, haunting her efforts with charges of Satanism, witchcraft and simple superstitious gossip. Rather than being daunted by this onslaught of fanatical criticism which included being denounced by members of the Italian government for blasphemy, Diamanda embraces the uproar.

She is fearlessly defiant in her outrage about the government's response to AIDS. Her contributions to the work of ACT UP/ New York included being part of the controversial demonstration at St. Patrick's Cathedral, lobbying against Cardinal O'Connor in 1989.

Before that, she stunned an audience at the New Music Seminar in New York with an outburst: "I've just completed my trilogy that is dedicated to my brothers and sisters, persons with AIDS who are now living and dying in Cadillacs, in hotel rooms, crucified in hospitals and still everywhere, you don't believe they are. And let me tell you something else while you are sitting there having a good time: the truth about somebody who's lying in vomit bags, lying in perspiration and in dirty old sheets. And when you aren't too busy eating pussy and getting autographs, you might go up to an ACT UP meeting tomorrow night. For all of you impotents, for all of you cowards, for all of you motherfuckers—but that would be too good for you." Her contribution caused an uproar.

Diamanda Galas is dedicated to eviscerating the shame and fear propelled by so many on the religious right against the gay community. Indeed, like a well-trained assassin, Galas holds them entirely responsible for "the failure to act responsibly in a medical emergency."

Diamanda uses the fundamentalists' own tools to strengthen her case with no greater cause for irony in her strong convictions. She rips and shreds apart their need for domination and hyperbolic righteousness. Her work begins with excerpts from the Old Testament casting out the shadows of the plague mentality of Jerry Falwell and others' condemnations.

By no means is her three-octave voice, coupled with reverb and other distortions, anything less than simply subversive. Her hysterical linguistics include her own characteristic whispering, speaking in tongues, combinations of Latin, Spanish, Greek, French and English. This is no endurance test but a work of illumination. Rather, Diamanda's grief is to call to arms, a homage to those who have died and a eulogy to those who are still suffering as outcasts. Using the language of Leviticus, she castigates: "This is the law of the plague, to teach when it is clean and when it is not clean."

Ms. Galas' devil is not the image of popular culture, but one rooted in ignorance and greed, mired in the Bush administration's response to AIDS. She excoriates any excuses and the tissue of lies that leaves groups scrabbling for dollars rather than energy to assist the sick.

Diamanda uses pounding percussion, her trademark two microphones, digital delay and brutal tonal display to demonstrate the discreet beauty of the work of Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Corbiere and Gerald Nerval. In her raspy drawl she urges the crowd: "Were you a witness?"

Galas' voice has always conveyed her sense of agony and loyal identification with the outcasts of society—the mentally ill, the whores, the witches burnt at the stake in the inquisition. Her operatic training and gothic presentations create a shattering effect. In a carefully constructed, gripping fashion, she transforms from operatic diva to feral child abandoned by the world, to gospel singer, to demented mourner. The combination is spine-chilling and poignant.

Diamanda Galas believes in the concept of performance as sacrifice and her Plague Mass serves to redeem people with AIDS from the mediocrity and stigma propelled by the right wing. Her guttural vocal ruptures evoke images of thousands of death rattles as people continue to die across the country, alone and in fear. This is underscored by the naked splendor of a dramatic synthesizer score. Diamanda commutes Baudelaire's vision of salvation in her own consecration to the plague. She describes her wordless songs as "intervenal"—what some would describe as a blood scent.

Diamanda Galas has produced a work of terrorism. Pounding the drums of battle, she barrages and snatches at any complacency toward the fate of people with AIDS. Her "vocal pyrotechnics on the edge of sanity" transform the mythology of sickness and demand "There are no more tickets to the funeral."