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A world premiere by Gregory Spears casts a veil of dream-like haunting over the story of Sleeping Beauty.

By 

Heidi Waleson

April 24, 2026 at 5:18 pm ET

Jonghyun Park and Susanne Burgess STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

“Sleepers Awake” by Gregory Spears, given its world premiere by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music on Wednesday, turns “Sleeping Beauty” on its head. In the familiar fairy tale, sleep represents something close to the curse of death; in this version, and in Mr. Spears’s haunting musical landscape, it is a state preferable to waking.

Mr. Spears concocted his libretto from the writings of the turn-of-the-century authors Robert Walser (translated by Ron Sadan) and Arthur Quiller-Couch, plus an English translation by Frances Cox of “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” a 1599 hymn text by Philipp Nicolai. (The hymn, though superficially about marriage, is actually about the resurrection into eternal life, which offers yet another level to an already multilayered concept.) The story starts where it usually ends: The Stranger (tenor Jonghyun Park) kisses Thorn Rose (soprano Susanne Burgess), the sleeping princess, waking her and her court from a century of enchanted sleep. No one seems pleased to be roused from dreams. They enact for their confused rescuer the story of the forgotten fairy at the christening, the curse and the spindle—and then go back to sleep. The cycle begins again, but this time the Stranger explains how he came to find the castle and mysteriously breach its defenses. Thorn Rose accepts him and everyone rejoices—but soon they all fall asleep again, suggesting that the cycle will repeat forever.

The accomplished Opera Philadelphia Chorus has the starring role in the 80-minute opera. In Mr. Spears’s hypnotic text settings and harmonies, the chorus becomes a kind of breathing atmosphere, echoing the lines of the individual characters and carrying them along with it into waking and sleeping. The opening setting of the “Sleepers, awake!” text starts out muddy, as though the singers are still half asleep and not quite on their parts. Words become a texture of stasis, as when “winding” and “whirring” are repeated multiple times to describe Thorn Rose’s climb to the turret where she finds the fatal spindle. The penultimate ensemble, as the crowd trips off happily to the wedding feast, is the brightest, perkiest moment of the opera, but suddenly the pitch drops, like a record player slowing down, and everyone sinks musically back into sleep.

Mr. Spears’s orchestration is similarly evocative of this timeless state, with rumbles, lush strings, and no high woodwinds. A pair of harps, placed antiphonally in boxes at opposite sides of the stage, plus a theorbo, offer an otherworldly descant, as do the sounds of the celesta and chimes. Percussion instruments—including a whistle and slap-stick—interrupt and startle.

Mr. Park’s ardent tenor brilliantly evokes the Stranger’s position as an intruder in this world as he insists, “Isn’t reality itself a kind of dream?” Ms. Burgess’s light soprano and plaintive vibrato suggest that Thorn Rose is not entirely convinced that awakening is a good idea, but she goes along with it. As the Court Poet, baritone Brian Major enlists the Stranger into the storytelling—their eerie duet as the voice of the evil fairy Carabosse is a striking musical moment. Four godmothers—Sophia Santiago, Annalise Dzwonczyk, Maren Montalbano and Robin Bier—step out of the texture as a close-toned quartet. Corrado Rovaris was the sensitive conductor.

The production, directed by Jenny Koons, doubles down on the mystery, not always helpfully. Jason Ardizzone West’s abstract set is a construction of curving ramps, accommodating much of the big chorus and festooned with night lights; a large disc hangs above a center platform, occasionally tilting and dipping. Yuki Link deploys dramatically colored lighting to accompany theatrical transitions, though the stage is often in shadow, making Maiko Matsushima’s monochromatic black and gray costumes for the workers, courtiers and townspeople of the chorus hard to distinguish. (The principal characters are dressed in color.)

No one lies down—the chorus members don delicate face veils and hold lighted candles to show when they are sleeping. Ms. Koons uses movement sparingly, in moments such as the arrival of the Stranger and Thorn Rose’s climb to the turret. Sometimes the movement makes a point—in the final dance, paired-off chorus members happily strut between the two reluctant lovers, who haven’t yet managed to hold hands, suggesting the fragility of their union.

While the stage pictures can be alluring, the effect is one of mood rather than storytelling. The production also tries to include the audience in its liminal state. We barely notice the beginning of the performance—a low, rumbling drone accompanies our arrival in the theater, and the actual music begins before the lights fully dim. The puzzling question of whether sleeping and waking are actually the same thing remains unanswered, but the powerful lure of sleep—soothing and with the promise of unknowing—is clear.

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s final work is an immersive, astonishing achievement, viscerally depicting a group of people affected in different ways by a school shooting.

By 

Heidi Waleson

April 8, 2026 at 5:27 pm ET

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Vilma Jää (above) and Joyce DiDonato (below) in a scene from ‘Innocence.’ MET OPERA

New York

Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” one of the most important new operas of this century, finally made it to the Metropolitan Opera on Monday in a superb performance. I have now seen it four times, including the video of its 2021 premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and it feels more remarkable with each experience. Through an alchemical synthesis of music, text and dramaturgy, the audience is immersed in the deepest feelings of its characters. It’s not just a story—it’s a living world, growing out of a violent event that is only too familiar. Through “Innocence,” we understand that world viscerally.

Sofi Oksanen’s crystalline Finnish libretto, translated into multiple languages by Aleksi Barrière, Saariaho’s son, takes place on two levels that gradually meld into one. A wedding is being celebrated in Helsinki in the 2000s; at the same time, seven people existing in the “world of memory” recall a tragic event that took place 10 years earlier. Bit by bit, the connection between the two is revealed and deepened—the Bridegroom’s brother shot up his high school, killing 10 students and a teacher. The Waitress, a last-minute substitution at the banquet, is the mother of one of the dead. On the surface, the wedding-party family has seemingly moved on; the others have not.

Saariaho’s interests are not preachy or didactic. Rather, the opera illuminates the enduring underlying trauma of everyone affected by the shooting and extends that uncomfortable sensation to the audience. The uneasy orchestral writing acts as a collective, disturbed subconscious. The opera begins with a low rumble, and snippets of sound—a bassoon, a celesta, a flute—emerge out of the darkness, like memories fighting their way to the surface, and continues in that vein, as the remembered pain surfaces and grows progressively more explicit over the opera’s 110 minutes. An unseen chorus acts like another orchestral element, echoing the singers and amplifying the music’s insidious power.

Rod Gilfry and Ms. DiDonato MET OPERA

The solo vocal writing is similarly evocative, its mix of styles making each character distinctive. The bright coloratura of the Mother-in-Law (Kathleen Kim) is full of anxiety and denial (she still insists her son’s act was “an accident”). As the Father-in-Law, baritone Rod Gilfry wrestles with his sense of responsibility for the shooting, and the heavy, deliberate bass of the Priest (Stephen Milling) conveys his guilt—he knew “something was wrong with that boy” but said nothing. The Waitress’s agony is ever-present—in mezzo Joyce DiDonato’s blistering performance it manifests as rage, searing the others as she confronts them one by one.

In the “memory” universe, most of the surviving students speak—jaggedly—in multiple languages (it was an international school) as they recount their present circumstances (“I can’t go to work”) and relive the shooting and its aftermath. One of them, Lily (soprano Beate Mordal), sings, her surface insouciance concealing something darker. As the Teacher, Lucy Shelton’s increasingly exaggerated Sprechstimme suggests that she is losing her mind. Most distinctive of all is the Waitress’s dead daughter Markéta (Vilma Jää): Her high, vibrato-less, folk-style leaps and yelps make her seem both eerie and childlike—the “angel” that her mother, inaccurately, insists she was.

Lucy Shelton MET OPERA

Simon Stone’s incisive production, first mounted in Aix, makes visual how the complex strands of the two stories wind together, mirroring the opera’s varied pacing. As Chloe Lamford’s brilliant two-level set rotates, we—and the characters—travel from the banquet room to the classroom, through intermediate spaces like a bathroom, a kitchen and a supply closet. Students frantically flee between the desks and down the stairs; the Bridegroom’s parents argue in a vestibule; the Waitress and Markéta, on different levels, recall that last morning as though in a dream. Markéta slowly walks on a lunchroom table, singing “Frog boy,” the bullying song that set the tragedy in motion.

As the truth is revealed, the spaces transform, almost magically. The entire set becomes the school, and then a series of empty rooms, with blood stains on the walls, as the full impact of the tragedy overtakes the present day. The saddest revelations happen here, against blank walls: The Bride (soprano Jacquelyn Stucker), who had been kept in the dark about the secret, poignantly renounces her hope of a real family; the Bridegroom (the piercing tenor Miles Mykkanen) admits that he was part of the shooting plan but chickened out. “I loved my brother,” he sings, a cappella. “I love him still.”

James Farncombe’s precise lighting underscores the time shifts; Mel Page’scostumes limn character—such as the Goth look of the student Iris (Julie Hega), the shooter’s death-besotted friend and co-conspirator, who also left him to act alone. Arco Renz’s choreography of the students as they haunt the present day makes their distress visible through physical contortions. Timo Kurkikangas’s sound design could use some tweaks—the spoken text was sometimes tinny or drowned out by the orchestra. Susanna Mälkki was the sensitive conductor.

The opera is dark, yet Saariaho offers some light. In the final scene, the haunted students relate how they are starting to regain some normalcy in their lives; the twitching, turbulent orchestra settles a bit, like a calmed nervous system; and Markéta quietly tells the Waitress, “Mom, let me go.” Guilt is pervasive in the opera, Saariaho’s last before her death in 2023, yet it is called “Innocence,” a reflection of its deep humanity, and the idea that tragedy can also encompass survival and forgiveness.

This world-premiere production of a work by Laura Kaminsky and Crystal Manich focuses on a group of students confronting the aftermath of a shooting.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Updated March 3, 2026 at 2:33 am ET

Timothi Williams DAVID BACHMAN

Pittsburgh

One of opera’s superpowers is its ability to communicate rich layers of ambiguity through music. Laura Kaminsky and Crystal Manich’s “Time to Act,” which had its world premiere at the Pittsburgh Opera’s Bitz Opera Factory on Saturday, goes for plot clarity and uplift instead. In Ms. Manich’s libretto, which drives the piece, a high-school drama class tackling Sophocles’ “Antigone” is confronted with a recent shooting at another school: Alona, who has just joined the class, was there, and her brother was the assailant. Unlike Kaija Saariaho’s devastating “Innocence” (coming to the Metropolitan Opera in April), which also deals with the aftermath of a school shooting, “Time to Act” approaches this trauma didactically and ties it up as neatly as an afterschool television special.

At 95 minutes, the opera is about 15 minutes too long, laden with considerable exposition and repetition. Drama-class tropes like a team-building exercise in which the students “tune in” to one another by tapping rhythms on their chests, and mantras like “Time to act,” “Find your light” and “Build the world you want to see,” are repeated ad nauseam. Each of the five principals has a theatrical “role to play”: Alona (cast as Antigone) is the mysterious interloper and disturber of the status quo; Tyson (Creon), an injured football player longing for his sports comfort zone, is the ego-driven authoritarian; José (Haemon), an eager aspiring actor, wants to rewrite the story; Bailey (Ismene), a girl in the class, is the sympathizer; Robin Grace, the drama teacher, helps extract lessons from the ordeal. But the parallels drawn between Sophocles’ play and the students’ real-world experience feel forced and even naïve, as are the instant healing that follows intimate revelations, the final “Kumbaya” moment, and the transformation of a Greek tragedy into a feminist victory.

Ms. Kaminsky’s score illustrates and propels rather than commanding attention itself. Individual instruments in the six-person ensemble (violin, cello, bass, clarinet/saxophone, piano and percussion) are strategically deployed for atmosphere. The eight-voice chorus (portraying the other students in the class) amplifies important moments: In the scene following an active-shooter drill, when the students talk about the shooting at the other school, they murmur, “Like a war zone,” showing how these events creep into the psyches of children.

The solo vocal writing has a handful of high points. Most notably, Ms. Kaminsky portrays Alona’s anguish in her big revelation scene with a jagged vocal line that seems painfully extracted from her, with the cello echoing Timothi Williams’s vibrant mezzo. By contrast, Tyson’s subsequent aria revealing his own old trauma is pat and unconvincing.

Joe Atkinson, Yazid Gray, Logan Wagner and Erik Nordstrom DAVID BACHMAN

The strong cast of young singers made persuasive high-school students. Shannon Crowley’s high soprano captured Bailey’s ditzy kindness; tenor Logan Wagner embodied José’s eager theater-kid ambition and insecurity. Baritone Erik Nordstrom did his best with the too-obvious character of Tyson as a macho egotist with hidden wounds. Best of all was Ms. Williams, imbuing Alona with a magnetic stage presence, emotional resonance and vocal versatility. Yazid Gray’s soothing baritone made Robin Grace into your all-time-favorite high-school teacher, challenging and supportive at the same time. Michael Sakir was the energetic and sensitive conductor.

Set and costume designer Lindsay Fuori created an instantly recognizable drama classroom with a central platform, a rack of costumes, desks and chairs that got piled up to barricade the doors during the active-shooter drill, and a recognizable range of student clothing choices. (Some were emblematic—Ty wears a varsity letter jacket over his injured arm; Alona huddles inside her dead brother’s oversize windbreaker.) Mary Ellen Stebbins’s lighting set the mood, from the red urgency of the drill to the spotlight on Alona as she finally unleashes her story. Ms. Manich’s detailed directing made the story and the play within it clear and created individual characterizations for the ensemble members as well as the principals. Even the celebratory ending—as the students resolve to “change the story”—seemed credible in context, though regrettably a more daunting task in the real world.

Jules Massenet’s classic work received a streamlined English adaptation from Heartbeat Opera, with musical-theater performers and a focus on the seamier side of the 18th-century setting.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Feb. 17, 2026 at 5:13 pm ET

A scene from ‘Manon!’ ANDREW BOYLE

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Heartbeat Opera’s most recent adaptation of a classic work, which just concluded a two-week run at the Space at Irondale, is an engaging 100-minute, musical-theater-inspired version of Jules Massenet’s “Manon.” Jacob Ashworth (Heartbeat’s artistic director) and Rory Pelsue wrote a new English translation, with spoken dialogue; Dan Schlosberg (the company’s music director) created the eight-player orchestral arrangement. It is now titled “Manon!” As usual with Heartbeat projects, the focus was narrowed to the main story, so choruses and ballets were cut along with some characters and subplots. Heartbeat also cast the show with singers experienced in musical theater, counting on their ability to articulate the English text clearly. Most of the performances were done without supertitles.

The adaptation retained the 18th-century setting and the central plot: The teenage siren Manon, on her way to a convent, runs off with a smitten young aristocrat, the Chevalier Des Grieux. But Manon’s desire for wealth and excitement invariably trumps love, and she abandons her swain to become a courtesan, enabled by her cousin Lescaut and her keeper, the elderly Guillot, here combined with De Brétigny, another rival for her services in the original. It doesn’t end well.

Justin Lee Miller ANDREW BOYLE

The snappy translation is deftly tailored to the music of the opera’s many famous earworm arias: Manon’s gavotte, “Profitons bien de la jeunesse,” becomes “Let me sparkle brightly while I may”; the Chevalier’s despairing “Ah! fuyez, douce image” is “Go away, dreams of love.” The librettists massaged the story a bit through their recitatives and connecting dialogue, making the prostitution theme more explicit—Lescaut is clearly pimping out his cousin.

Along with the English translation, a streamlined, bare-bones approach to the music and production increased the show’s immediacy. The musical-theater singers excelled in theatricality and diction, but I missed some of the lushness that we expect from opera performances. Emma Grimsley’s soprano had the necessary brightness and coloratura flexibility for Manon, but her monochromatic timbre missed the character’s pathos. Tenor Matt Dengler, a sweetly passionate and persuasive Des Grieux, overcooked some of his fortes but was clear about the character’s gradual corruption by Manon; as Lescaut, Jamari Darling’s baritone was nasal, and he was directed into some jarringly over-the-top antics.

Tenor Glenn Seven Allen was a solid Guillot; Justin Lee Miller’s rolling bass supplied richness as the Count Des Grieux, the Chevalier’s disapproving father. The original trio of prostitutes was reduced to a duo—Kathryn McCreary (Pousette) and Natalie Walker (Javotte)—who were striking in their close-harmony teasing and mockery, especially of Guillot (“Daddy, dear”). Mr. Schlosberg conducted from the keyboard; his orchestration for three winds, three strings and harp had his usual flair for exactly the right instrument and texture at the right time. The use of the harp stood out, as did the harpsichord for Manon’s apotheosis as a courtesan in Act 3 and an organ for the church of St. Sulpice. Ryan Gamblin’s sound design balanced the voices reasonably well, but was sometimes earsplittingly loud, an unwelcome intrusion from today’s Broadway.

Natalie Walker, Jamari Darling, and Kathryn McCreary ANDREW BOYLE

Set designer Alexander Woodward kept things simple. The playing area was a wide, shallow platform with the orchestra behind it, embellished by a few props—Manon’s two trunks, repurposed according to the scene; the “little table” for the impoverished lovers’ garret; and eight chandeliers that descended from the ceiling when Manon was living high. Yichen Zhou’s colored lighting supplied the sparkle; David Mitsch’s18th-century costumes the context.

Director Rory Pelsue zeroed in on desire and dissipation. He took Manon’s Act 3 Cours la Reine triumph to its logical extreme, staging it as a striptease/bondage-party performance—in period underwear, stockings and heels—by a top prostitute; when she seduced Des Grieux away from his priestly vows in St. Sulpice, the line “Don’t you know my hands” was explicitly blocked to be sure that he would. With the aid of Sara Gettelfinger’s choreography, the five subordinate characters jelled as an ensemble, supplying ambience and making up for the missing chorus. It was all a stimulating change from opera-house productions, which often lean on 18th-century elegance instead of exploring the seamy underside and corruption of the demimonde that is at the heart of the piece. 

This year’s edition of the opera and music-theater program features Sarah Kirkland Snider’s ‘Hildegard,’ about the 12th-century abbess; Susan Zeeman Rogers’s ‘Precipice,’ a story of nature and feminism; and a celebration of Beth Morrison Projects, which has been producing adventurous new opera for 20 years.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 12, 2026 at 4:35 pm ET

A scene from ‘Hildegard.’ ANGEL ORIGGI

New York

The first two premieres of the 13th Prototype Festival (running through Jan. 18) were by and about women. That’s appropriate, given that this is the 20th anniversary of Beth Morrison Projects, whose principal is the pioneering co-founder and now sole producer of Prototype, and an indefatigable champion of new, unconventional operas.

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fascinating “Hildegard,” which had its New York debut at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on Friday, explores the life and mind of the 12th-century Benedictine abbess, visionary and composer Hildegard von Bingen. Ms. Snider’s libretto fictionalizes and extrapolates from the historical record. It is set at a biographical turning point: 1147, when Hildegard’s transcribed visions were submitted to the pope, who would declare her either a prophet or a heretic.

Ms. Snider depicts a compelling character. Hildegard repeatedly and courageously stands up to the dominant male power of the Church but is disturbed by the nature of her feelings for a troubled young novice, Richardis von Stade, who illustrates the transcriptions. A lot happens—the piece runs two hours and 40 minutes including intermission—yet the many underlying themes, including feminism, illness (Hildegard was also a healer and was thought to have migraines), shame, the importance of art, the nature of love and the nature of God, permeate the story. It’s a bit too long, with a lot of text to follow, but Hildegard’s visions, exploding out of the plot scenes, are mesmerizing.

Ms. Snider’s distinctive compositional voice finds the otherworldly in the day-to-day. The principal women get highly dramatic arias—Hildegard’s are stunningly sung by Nola Richardson in a pure, clear soprano; Richardis (Mikaela Bennett) has a darker, more tormented musical language. In the lines of Abbot Cuno, Hildegard’s antagonist, David Adam Moore exudes weight and a sense of superiority; Tenor Roy Hage, as her friend Volmar, radiates concern. Traditional Latin prayers sung by men have a heavy, chant-like ominousness; the two female angels who appear in the visions convey an urgent, slightly dissonant ecstasy.

The richness and variety of orchestral timbres belie the ensemble’s small size—a string quartet and a woodwind trio of bassoon, clarinet and flute go from glassy to earthy; a forcefully plucked bass suggests trouble, while a harp is everywhere, suggesting Hildegard’s visceral connection to the divine. Drew Sensue-Weinstein’ssound design, which included adroit use of reverb on voices and instruments, dovetailed with Gabriel Crouch’s skillful conducting, which brought out the score’s transparent, early music-style radiance.

The production invoked the historical paintings of Hildegard’s visions as well as modern interpretations of them, using videos in which swirling specks of colored light coalesced into figures. (Deborah Johnson designed the artwork and projections.) Marsha Ginsberg’s set featured an open-sided gold box that rotated and moved on and off stage—it became the scriptorium and the abbot’s domain. In keeping with the medieval look, some of the individuals pushing it had animal headdresses, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts. Molly Irelan designed attractive monastic garb; a luxurious brocade gown for Richardis’s mother, the imperious Margravine (Blythe Gaissert); and fantastical robes and headdresses for the angels. Elkhanah Pulitzer’s direction segued smoothly from the real to the visionary. Ms. Snider is an astute dramatist: Her heroine tragically loses the woman she loves, but finds her strength and, with the papal seal of approval on her visions, is able to move her nuns out from under the thumb of the abbot to form a women-only community. Feminism triumphs.

A scene from ‘Precipice.’ MARIA BARANOVA

“Precipice,” given its world premiere on Thursday at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, is billed as an object-theater/chamber opera. The concept is by the visual artist Susan Zeeman Rogers and the 75-minute show works primarily as a narrative for her videos and miniature dioramas. This time, the feminist story is a little thin and predictable: Karen Fisher’s libretto is about how men silence women and seek to dominate the natural world. As a child, the imaginative Ana (Alice Tolan-Mee) longs to be a tree, but is suppressed by her parents (Daisy Press and Kyle Pfortmiller); as an adult, she escapes when her fiancé (Gabriel Hernández) also tries to control her. Rima Fand’s pleasant, folk-tinged score is illustrative rather than striking; the accompanying ensemble of mandolin, string quartet and bass, led from the piano by Mila Henry, plays a lot of ostinatos. Mallory Catlett directed.

Ms. Rogers’s set and object designs are eye-catching. The miniature family-house diorama at the front of the stage gets explored in the background video, its rooms opened like a dollhouse; Ana lies in a tiny, snow-covered forest, trying to become a part of it. The video also whirls through black-and-white landscapes of created objects—paper trees, a cardboard strip mine, a mirror lake. This use of video—along with a murmuring choral background—makes Ana’s dream sequences, in which she tries to become part of the landscape, the most effective parts of the show. In the final coup de théâtre, a black-and-white environment slowly transforms into a brilliantly green, leafy tree as Ana’s choked syllables become the “I” that her father forbade her to use.

Beth Morrison Projects is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the release of the two-volume “BMP: Songbook,” a recording and sheet-music anthology of selections from the company’s more than 65 commissioned and produced operas and music-theater works. One striking feature of the anthology is the prominence of female composers—11 out of 19—including such current luminaries as Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun and Ellen Reid, all of whom were championed early on by BMP. Ms. Morrison wanted to infuse opera with new people, new voices, new forms, and stories that didn’t necessarily end with dead heroines. These two Prototype operas represent just one aspect of the significant impact she has had on the field.

The company’s overstuffed new staging of Bellini’s final work, set during the English Civil War, proves a marvelous vocal showcase for stars Lisette Oropesa and Lawrence Brownlee.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 2, 2026 at 2:40 pm ET

Lisette Oropesa and Lawrence Brownlee KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

It was fitting that the Metropolitan Opera celebrated New Year’s Eve with a new production of “I Puritani” (1835), as Vincenzo Bellini’s final opera is replete with vocal fireworks and splendid tunes. Like the two other bel canto works presented by the company so far this season—the new production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” and a revival of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment”—it was luxuriously cast and conducted. Headlined by conductor Marco Armiliato, soprano Lisette Oropesa as the heroine Elvira and tenor Lawrence Brownlee as her beloved Arturo, this was a musically idiomatic and expressive traversal.

The challenges of those two roles are one reason that the piece is less commonly performed than other bel canto operas. Another is that its saggy plot (the libretto is by Carlo Pepoli, based on a French play) doesn’t make a lot of sense. Charles Edwards, who directed and designed this nominally traditional production, tried to solve that problem by keeping to the story’s original 17th-century period and magnifying its political background. The lovers are on opposing sides of the English Civil War. Elvira is one of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans and Arturo a Cavalier, a supporter of the Stuart royal family. Remarkably, her family agrees to their marriage, but when Arturo discovers that the mysterious prisoner held by Puritans is Enrichetta, the widow of the executed King Charles I, he helps her escape. Elvira, believing herself betrayed in love, goes mad. Act 2 is about her madness; Act 3 about Arturo’s return and her recovery.

Mr. Edwards’s unit set is a wooden Puritan meeting house with banked pews and a towering pulpit in one corner; Gabrielle Dalton’s sumptuous costumes contrast the classic dour Puritan look—including big white collars and black hats—with the colorful satins of the Cavaliers (Arturo in baby blue, Enrichetta in yellow). So far, so straightforward. Mr. Edwards, however, has made some additions. First, there’s a pantomimed back story: During the overture, actors depicting the lovers as young teens flirt and are discouraged by adults. Then, in the first scene—a soldier’s chorus, a prayer and another chorus anticipating the wedding—he shows Elvira (still played by the actor) refusing to marry the Puritan her father has chosen. Scene 2, a scrim projection informs us, takes place eight years later, moving us back into the time frame of the original libretto.

Eve Gigliotti and Mr. Brownlee KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

Directorial interpolations keep coming. Elvira is friendly with the prisoner Enrichetta (Eve Gigliotti) and draws the captive’s portrait as her uncle, Giorgio (Christian Van Horn), explains how he persuaded her father to let her marry Arturo; the two women do a happy dance during the cabaletta. When Riccardo (Artur Ruciński), the rejected Puritan suitor, shows up to thwart Arturo’s rescue of Enrichetta (who he thinks is Elvira), he gropes her drunkenly instead of dueling with his rival. In the final moments of Act 1, the now-demented Elvira jumps on the supine Riccardo. 

Scrim projections between the acts inform us of the progress of the war. The meeting house grows progressively more dilapidated, and the costumes get shabbier, indicating that things aren’t going well for the Puritans. The opening chorus of Act 2, in which the Puritans grieve over Elvira’s madness, features a woman giving birth to a stillborn baby in full view of the community. Tim Mitchell’s lighting creates dramatic changes in tone, especially during Elvira’s hallucinations.

Some of the additions work. By Act 3, Elvira’s elegant white wedding dress has deteriorated into a filthy shift, her long mane of hair is cropped short, and she has painted numerous pictures of Enrichetta that are slashed with red, an outward manifestation of her grief-driven obsession. This helps give texture to her reunion with Arturo, in which she slips in and out of madness. But many of Mr. Edwards’s ideas feel imposed rather than organic—out of a need to illustrate lengthy vocal sequences or provide context that doesn’t really exist in the opera—and thus end up being distracting rather than illuminating. He also eschews the traditional happy ending. Rolando Villazón, the director of this season’s “La Sonnambula,” did the same, but in that case, the choice was theatrically consistent. 

Christian Van Horn and Artur Ruciński KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

The music, however, was top-notch. Ms. Oropesa’s limpid, flexible soprano brought a heart-tugging vulnerability to Elvira, and her pealing coloratura was both accurate and expressive. She was especially mesmerizing in her extended Act 2 mad scene—“Qui la voce” and “Vien diletto.” Mr. Brownlee’s tenor proved rock-solid in Arturo’s demanding music, from his exquisitely relaxed, almost languid opening aria, “A te, o cara,” to some punishing high Fs. Mr. Van Horn’s handsome bass-baritone made for a sympathetic Giorgio; Mr. Ruciński’s gravelly baritone brought out Riccardo’s macho arrogance. Their militant duet, “Suoni la tromba,” was a musical high point, only slightly marred by some “Braveheart”-style red and white body-painting for them and a phalanx of extra men. Ms. Gigliotti was an eloquent Enrichetta.

All the ensembles were stylishly handled, and the excellent Met chorus was skillfully woven into the texture throughout. The score has a military subtext—trumpets and drums are always interrupting happy scenes, and an ominous horn theme plays a major role. Fortunately, the orchestra, under Mr. Armiliato’s astute leadership, did better than the overstuffed staging in making that point clear.