Boston Lyric Opera’s current production of “The Merry Widow” was planned long before the company decided to leave its current home in the Shubert Theatre to seek its fortunes elsewhere. But when the downbeat finally arrived on Friday night, it was hard to avoid linking the spirit of BLO’s present moment with the central theme of Lillian Groag’s new staging of the Lehár classic: the ending of an era.
It has been an 18-year run for the company in this venue, but BLO’s current needs have outgrown the Shubert’s capacities, and in truth, the theater’s acoustic for the unamplified voice has always been problematic. Next season, BLO will mount its four productions on four different stages, beginning with “Carmen” at, of all places, the Opera House. It will be the first actual opera presented in that space in more than a quarter-century.
(Let’s hope there will be more opera in that venue’s future. But if BLO’s “Carmen” turns out to be just a one-off, then isn’t it time to change the name of the Opera House? The current name has come to feel increasingly like an Orwellian euphemism, trading on the prestige of an art form you cannot encounter there, while at the same time obfuscating the embarrassing truth that Boston has no opera house.)
Meanwhile, as BLO plots its future moves, “The Merry Widow” is serving as its farewell to the Shubert. Groag has fashioned a new book and updated the action to the eve of World War I, such that Lehár’s glittering waltzes now become the swan song for an earlier age of European innocence, whether real or imagined. This production works hard to summon our longing for a time when the antics of lovers seemed the most important concern, when wars were still fought with etiquette and manners, and when the machine gun was a newfangled and, we are told, unpronounceable invention. And the updating succeeds in raising the pathos quotient of the work’s frivolity. That said, I left wishing Groag’s new book were funnier, a lot tighter, and more nimble at avoiding cliché. (Lehár’s own record of comportment during the Nazi era also sits uncomfortably with the innocence that is summoned here in his name, but we won’t get bogged down in those details!)
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Under the baton of Alexander Joel — half-brother of Billy — the orchestra played admirably and, despite some occasional blurriness of contact between stage and pit, the score’s beloved music reached its mark, as evidenced by a hearty ovation from the large opening night crowd. Stand-outs in the cast included Chelsea Basler’s sweet-voiced Valencienne and John Tessier’s ardent Camille. Erin Wall and Roger Honeywell performed honorably as the reluctant pair at the opera’s center, the widow Hanna Glawari (here a former Ziegfeld girl) and the continental playboy Danilo. And Andrew Wilkowske took up the role of Baron Mirko Zeta with good comic instincts.
In this staging, the final curtain descends slowly, almost reluctantly, but after its last lowering on May 8, BLO’s next chapter will have arrived. For its part, the company’s leadership has already acted boldly by exiting the Shubert. Now the city and its opera fans must step up and decide in earnest what kind of home for opera it will support.
THE MERRY WIDOW
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Presented by Boston Lyric Opera
At: Shubert Theatre, Friday night (runs through May 8)
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeremy_Eichler.