Opera Philadelphia in partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music has presented the stage premiere of a radically altered version of A Quiet Place, a serious opera that Leonard Bernstein wrote near the end of his life. It’s notable for extra-musical reasons, because it was Bernstein’s attempt to work out issues within his own family.

Acclaimed as a conductor, pianist, educator, and composer of symphonic, ballet and Broadway music, Bernstein biggest frustration was that he had not written a serious opera.

At its premiere at the Houston Grand Opera in 1983, A Quiet Place was a 110 minute work in four scenes, using a very large orchestra that included synthesizer and electric guitar. The libretto was by the young director Stephen Wadsworth. It was preceded by a performance of Bernstein’s 1951 comic opera Trouble in Tahiti. The authors were dissatisfied and turned A Quiet Place into a three act opera which premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 1986.

A substantial amount of A Quiet Place material was cut to accommodate the entirety of Trouble in Tahiti, which was incorporated as a flashback. I saw another staging of that version at New York City Opera in 2013. The new version is in three acts presented with very brief pauses between acts and lasting one hour and 40 minutes.

The main characters are the children of Sam and Dinah, named Dede and Junior, plus Junior’s lover François. Dede also is attracted to François, marries him, and they live together as a family  — or is it a ménage à trois? The parents Sam and Dinah are shown as bitter antagonists who fought in the presence of their children, as Bernstein’s parents had done.

Garth Edwin Sunderland is a composer who has overseen productions of Bernstein’s work on Broadway. He explains that the Leonard Bernstein Office came to believe that a chamber version of the opera, with a reduced orchestration, would allow for a more intimate experience of this deeply personal work. This new version does not include Trouble in Tahiti, because its jazzy nature was so different from Bernstein’s later style, and this new version restores some fine music that was cut from the Vienna version, including arias for Sam and François.

Kent Nagano conducted Sunderland’s chamber adaptation in November of 2013 in a concert performance with Ensemble Modern in Berlin. This production in Philadelphia is the world stage premiere of the chamber version.

I find it more communicative than the earlier work. Because of its focus on the main characters, and its orchestra of only 18, this A Quiet Place is a more intimate look at a troubled family. The vocalizing is in closer synchronization with the orchestra. Theoretically, we may regret the elimination of a large mass of players (the original had 72 musicians), but there’s plenty of rich sonority, and individual instruments come through more clearly. Overall, there’s more transparency.

A Quiet Place essentially is the story of a father and his children grappling with their history of bitterness and anger, and attempting, tentatively, to overcome it and reconcile.

Bernstein’s music is astringent in comparison with his choral and his Broadway compositions, but haunting melodies do exist, plus a couple of catchy showpieces. The latter part of the opera has a pulsating quartet that’s emotionally compelling. I also discovered three impressive arias that were cut after the Houston premiere — “Oh, François, Please,” “Dear Loved Ones” and “Stop, You Will Not Take Another Step.” The best aria is the query of Dede when she re-visits her late mother’s garden, “Mommy Are You Here?,” gorgeously sung by Ashley Milanese.

Tyler Zimmerman was impressive as the father, Sam. He used his bass-baritone voice richly when he angrily sang to his son “You Shouldn’t Have Come” and touchingly when he returned home after his wife’s funeral and sang that “it’s the same old house” accompanied by brass and reeds.

Jean-Michel Richer, a tenor from Montreal, was effective as François, and Dennis Chmelensky’s high baritone voice rang out brightly as Junior, whom he portrayed with punk sassiness. Both showed fine musicianship as they dealt with some super-fast text and tricky rhythms.

The effect was seriously compromised, however, by inauthentic accents. This opera has one character who is specifically French-Canadian but all the others are Americans, and hardly any of them sounded so. Milanese did best, but even she occasionally enunciated like an operatic soprano. Zimmerman was more artificial, and Chmelensky’s accent was totally inappropriate.

Many British and European performers appear on American stages and in films playing American characters, and they are rightly criticized when some of their words are pronounced with a foreign accent. The same standard should be applied to performers in such an American work as this Bernstein opera. It’s just as important for them to accurately pronounce the words of their characters as it is for them to hit the correct notes. (Think about the work of Audra McDonald, and Dawn Upshaw, and Eileen Farrell!)

Most of the world now knows that Bernstein’s father Sam was dissatisfied with his son, and that Leonard had sexual relationships with both genders — he’s been described as ambisexual — and the opera includes similar situations. But A Quiet Place is not literally biographical. For example, the libretto shows the son as being mentally unstable, rather than being a multifaceted genius like Lenny. And Junior sings about having incestuous sex with his sister, with no foundation in real life.

Bernstein married the Chilean-born actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre in 1951. She wrote to him, “If your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depends on a certain sexual pattern what can you do? I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the LB altar.” That situation is only referenced indirectly in this opera; the tension between the father and his children is emphatically addressed.

The direction by Daniel Fish was problematic. The first scene showed everyone at a funeral parlor facing directly at the audience (rather than diagonally as in A Quiet Place’s previous production.) This allowed us to clearly hear and see each character, but it seemed artificial. In later scenes the interaction of family members was visceral, but they were on their own, with no scenery or props. Although the text refers to Dinah’s garden, we see no trace of greenery. These choices prevented the proceedings from seeming real, which should have been a prime goal.

The deceased mother appeared, mutely, throughout. When Dede sang about her mom, old home movies by video designer Jeff Larson were projected on a big screen behind her. The idea was good, but it was prolonged excessively.

Corrado Rovaris led the excellent players from the Curtis Orchestra with precision, and with considerable emotion.