Performer: Schyler Vargas

Mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught anchors a fluid and appealingly staged new production of Kevin Puts' penny dreadful.

Glimmerglass Opera Festival’s production of Candide leans heavily on a dry comedic sensibility, which most of the cast execute admirably.

Francesca Zambello sets the whole opera as a flashback, showing, during the prelude, the heroine surrounded by doctors and nurses in a sanatorium for patients dying from tuberculosis.