The Enchanted Island (2011)

"A true feast for the eyes and the ears, enhanced by the dreamlike images of a staging that delighted again and again with every new scene and always served the music."

“The Enchanted Island”, a lavishly zany production now playing at the Met (it will be broadcast in the company’s “Live in HD” series on Jan. 21), revives the concept of the Baroque pastiche opera, with extant scores repurposed to fresh dramatic ends. As Handel might have done when pressed for time, the writer and director Jeremy Sams has devised new words for a slew of Baroque arias both famous and obscure, spinning a semi-Shakespearean tale. (Essentially, a spell-casting mixup lands the lovers from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the island of “The Tempest.”) The libretto runs long and waxes cutesy, but it has its charms, and the music is terrific: a cast led by Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels, Luca Pisaroni, and the godlike Plácido Domigo revels in Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and Purcell, among others, with William Christie conducting stylishly and Phelim McDermott providing witty direction. Let’s hope this project creates more of an appetite for Baroque fare at the Met.

The fact that this show is called a “pastiche” has, I believe, served to diminish the way it is thought of by many people who consider themselves serious operagoers. “Pastiche” has come to mean a tossing together of some of this and some of that. But this is anything but a frothy confection. It is entertaining, to be sure, but also deeply affecting and often mesmerizing. The Enchanted Island works because it seems to have been forged as a common vision by all of its creators -- musicians, writers, directors, designers. It is a perfect storm, a series of elements that combine just so and create something great, gorgeous and awesome.

The work has musical and intellectual rigor, done with an 18th-century sense of optimism, balance and lightness. There are two acts, a suspenseful story with many surprises, a witty and well-choreographed (Graciela Daniele) dream ballet for Caliban, of all people, and a congruent arrangement of arias, duets, sung passages, recitatives and a notable relation between key signatures as the music moves along.

Forget "Auld Lang Syne." The best music to ring in a new year is "Now a bright new day is dawning," the joyous chorus that ends The Enchanted Island, the inventive concoction that had its premiere on Saturday night at the Metropolitan Opera. The music for this finale is lifted from the "Hallelujah" chorus that concludes Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus. The new words are by the librettist Jeremy Sams, who devised the story and assembled this fanciful, clever and touching pastiche by selecting arias, ensembles, choruses and dances from works by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and lesser-known Baroque composers.