Performer: Neal Goren

Witty, edgy and full of Freudian insight, Anne Sexton’s libretto updates the dark and bizarre world of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Conrad Susa’s music is equally droll and contemporary. 

Gotham Chamber Opera's current double bill of Bohuslav Martinů's Alexandre bis and Comedy on the Bridge prove that an opera company doesn’t need to be the biggest in town to be the most innovative.

  Conducted by Neal Goren, the musicians breathed across and blew notelessly into their instruments, creating layers of sounds that grew ever more intriguing as the repetition of the word “nevermore” grew ever more sinister.

On Monday, Gotham Chamber Opera presented Daniel Catán’s opera La hija de Rappaccini (“Rappaccini’s Daughter”) in the Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Describing its new production of Francesco Cavalli’s 1668 opera Eliogabalo, the Gotham Chamber Opera compares the exploits of titular depraved Roman emperor Heliogabalus to Salome. There’s an obvious mistake here: Salome is an opera; Heliogabalus was a historical figure.

The plight of women trapped in plural marriage—one husband with multiple wives—glowed like a firebrand on the Perelman Theater stage on Sunday. Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Dark Sisters, in co-production with Gotham Chamber Opera and the Music-Theatre Group, is OCP’s final offering of the 2011-12 season.