Susan Zeeman Brown's set is a simple, striking communal meeting room, its edges charred by the fires of experience; at key points of crisis burnt support beams collapse into the room.
Rafael Jaen's costumes are severe, mostly in black, but they contribute to strong stage images; for the scene in the underworld, members of the the chorus, now spirits, are cocooned in net. Alceste, the heroine who agrees to die to save her husband's life, casts off her outer garments, removes her jewelry, and spends much of the opera in a shimmering white shift.
Christopher Ostrom's lighting both creates atmosphere and isolates detail with cinematic precision. An unfortunate green episode does suggest that Hades swims in split-pea soup.
The chorus becomes a counterweight to the leading soprano, and 16 singers from Boston Baroque's chorus cover themselves with glory with clear, focused singing; vivid acting; purposeful gesture; and even a bit of line dancing. Gluck would have had a corps de ballet in Paris; the chorus takes over those duties. Only visible set rearrangement fails to convince -- it looks a little bit like cleanup time at the end of a 12-step meeting.
Soprano Nicole Folland creates a moving and sympathetic heroine despite lacking the natural vocal resources this particular part requires. She has a glowing stage presence, moves well, projects feeling with immediacy and sincerity. She sings musically and her timbre has glamor, but she also produces a pronounced vibrato, which puts her at odds with everyone else onstage and in the pit.
The music needs a steady column of sound, especially in the low and middle register, to support forceful and vivid declamation of the text. Folland just doesn't have have the big guns for low-lying phrases, and when she ascends to high climaxes, as during the opera's most famous aria, "Divinites du Styx," her jaw waggles and the tone destabilizes.
