How an Opera Aria Crashed the Oscars Best Original Song Competition

This year’s Best Original Song nominees at the Oscars are a blues number, a K-Pop ditty, a Nick Cave ballad, an inspirational Diane Warren track … and an aria?

Well, yeah. Nicholas Pike’s “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” which edged out entries from Miley Cyrus, Billy Idol, Sara Bareilles and Brandi Carlile, Ed Sheeran, Nine Inch Nails and Stephen Schwartz to land a nomination, was inspired by opera and sung by Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez. At times, the piano-based song from “Viva Verdi!” feels fully operatic; at others...