History's jury may still be out in the case of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman who was famously tried and acquitted in the ax murder of her father and stepmother in 1892. But in the world of opera the facts are in, the verdict rendered: guilty as charged.
Or so it is in Jack Beeson's darkly riveting opera "Lizzie Borden," which presumes her guilt and sets out to sketch a family portrait that addresses the underlying question: What might have led the daughter of a respectable New England family to commit this grisliest of crimes?
The opera premiered in 1965 at New York City Opera and became Beeson's best-known work, with a hard-hitting score, a scenario by Richard Plant, and a libretto by Kenward Elmslie, all of which reached for mythic resonance. Beeson liked to call this his New England Elektra story.
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But for all the respect afforded this work during the composer's lifetime (he died in 2010), Beeson's "Lizzie" was more heard about than heard, possibly because its scale put it beyond the budgetary reach of many smaller companies. So for its current production, which opened at The Castle at Park Plaza on Wednesday night, Boston Lyric Opera has created a new chamber version, boiling down its stage action to a taut seven scenes that play out over some 80 minutes with no intermission. The orchestral forces have also been greatly reduced, with just 19 players credited in the program.
The scalpel has been deftly wielded (by John Conklin and Todd Bashore) but Conklin is right to emphasize, in a recent interview, that this version does not substitute for the original. Hearing the opening measures on Wednesday night, I immediately missed the sense of epic grandeur and, yes, the mythic scale that Beeson's original Prelude was able to instantly telegraph in full orchestral cry. But during a year that has seen the demise of the very company that commissioned the original "Lizzie," it's clear these are leaner operatic times. That smaller companies operating in this current environment will now have access to this significant 20th-century American opera, will, one can only hope, bring it more performances.
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To unveil its new chamber version, also headed to Tanglewood this summer, BLO tapped the director Christopher Alden, who has the action play out on a large platform placed before a giant black-and-white photo of Lizzie's actual home. Beeson's opera changes aspects of her story, but the work's power still hinges on its plausible connection to historical events, and the photo helps summon that linkage.
Especially because Alden's own staging powerfully emphasizes the contrasting sense of the family's inner reality, not how the household looked but how it felt on the day of the murders. To that end, everything is visually askew. The floor slopes, family members address each other at odd angles, or standing back to back. And, rather more succinctly, just a few bars into the prelude, Lizzie walks the length of the platform and plunges her ax into the middle of the dining room table. She then simply leaves it there lodged into the wood, the visual analog of a prolonged silent scream, invisible to most of the characters even as they sit before it at the table.
In the title role, Heather Johnson sang with pointed vocal power and exacting dramatic control, conveying the torment behind Lizzie's veil of Victorian propriety. There are of course many repressed daughters out there with insides roiling, and yet very few take to the ax. What would have made this portrayal still more persuasive would have been a clearer glint of the demonic, a sense of not just repression but the terrifyingly unmoored freedom that lurked beneath it. As Lizzie's cruel stepmother Abigail, a vocally assured Caroline Worra taunted and pushed Lizzie with theatrical aplomb toward the unspeakable deed. Daniel Mobbs was strong as Lizzie's censorious father, Chelsea Basler sang well as the sister Margret, and David McFerrin and Omar Najmi handled the two smaller roles capably.
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Beeson's expertly crafted score captures a certain mid-20th century moment in American opera, but it also survives beyond it. The music ranges from harsh expressionistic textures to tunefully generous vocal writing, all deftly tailored to the dramatic moment at hand. A few spots on Wednesday's performance might have benefited from more aural space around them, but David Angus's conducting was largely assured and well-paced, making the most of this lighter, fleeter "Lizzie," a version one hopes will generate more performances without taking the place of its still-authoritative original. Meanwhile, the tale at the center of this work has clearly not relaxed its grip on our cultural imagination.
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com