The Met, a magnet for star singers, flexed its muscles to stack the cast of Beethoven’s only opera, with Lise Davidsen in the title role.

Gene Scheer whittled down the 600-plus-page novel to a 64-page libretto, often tweaking Herman Melville’s phrasing to make it ...

The work has become a classic thanks to its touching story about the transience of love and life lived at the margins of ...