A consistent highlight of recent Boston Lyric Opera seasons has been its Opera Annex series, offering a single production annually of more adventurous repertoire in a location outside the company’s home in the acoustically challenged Shubert Theatre. This year’s selection, “The Lighthouse’’ by Peter Maxwell Davies, opened last night at the John F. Kennedy Library and it is another clear success, a night of darkly riveting modern chamber opera played out against the backdrop of Boston Harbor.
“The Lighthouse,’’ which premiered in 1980, is a mix of historical mystery and grim psychological fable. It was inspired by an actual event: the strange disappearance of three keepers from a lighthouse off the coast of Scotland in 1900. Their fate was never discovered, despite an official investigation that provides the narrative frame for the opera’s prologue. Most of the work, however, unfolds in a single compressed act that fancifully imagines what might have happened to the keepers on their final night. Davies’s score, with his own libretto, is a marvel of economy, deploying the most modest vocal and instrumental forces - admittedly pushed to the very edge of their techniques, and sometimes beyond - to create distinct characterizations for each keeper, sketch three misty backstories, and then push each man, under extreme stress, into the abyss of his past. .
The keepers joke bitterly, argue among themselves, and each sings an ingeniously devised set-piece song - a ballad of hardscrabble city life, a treacly love song, a self-righteous hymn - music superficially blithe but hinting at inner demons that ultimately exact their revenge. The three men eventually revert to their roles from the prologue, and the work ends with mischievous and darkly ambiguous flourishes.
Davies’s wonderfully pungent music is full of rasps, rattles, shutters, and cries. It pushes singers and instrumentalists into extremely high and low registers, churns subliminally in the background, and ultimately telegraphs an atmosphere of pristine dread. In this production, Tim Albery’s direction reflects the score’s tightness and concision, and Camellia Koo’s set - a modest lighthouse and three auxiliary ship riggings spaced around the library’s Smith Hall - is simple yet effective. Tenor John Bellemer, baritone Christopher Burchett, and bass-baritone David Cushing form a strong ensemble cast, and conductor David Angus drew a capable, at times nuanced performance of this punishing score.
Advertisement
The production arrives only weeks after Opera Boston’s sudden closure, and is a good reminder that the gap between the two companies had been narrowing. In coming seasons, the big question will be whether BLO can continue expanding its creative vision and offerings, grow its support, claim a broader artistic mandate, and become the one larger and more versatile opera company the city has long been lacking.
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.