Long before movies existed, opera composers figured out that sex and religion sell. ''Thais," based on an ironic novel by Anatole France, tells the story of a monk in the desert, Athanael, who travels to Alexandria to convert the city's most wicked courtesan, Thais. She gets religion, stumbles across the desert to a nunnery, and dies as Athanael, tormented by carnal desire, arrives to declare his passion. It's too late; all she sees is the seraphic host, all she hears are the harps of heaven.
Kaduce has a peach of a voice that gains in color and luster as it climbs all the way up to a fearless high D; her singing is both passionate and elegant, and her French is excellent.
But Sunday in the Alexandrian scene, she seemed less the object of universal desire than a prom queen distraught because someone else had a more gorgeous corsage. She was not always helpfully directed, and at the climactic moment of open lewdness she lowered the upper half of her dress to reveal a gold lamé top, like a Miss America contestant changing from evening gown to swimsuit, a million dollar mermaid.
As the penitential Thais, Kaduce was significantly better. In Massenet, as in Puccini, the handling of intimate passages is as important as pouring it on, and Kaduce sounded especially lovely in Thais's farewell to the image of Eros and in the first, exhausted duet as she traverses the desert. She conveyed the final moments of redemption with rapture.
Opposite her, baritone James Westman was also excellent as the monk overtaken by the lusts he denounces because he fears them so much. He has a strong voice, a burly presence, and an actor's imagination.
David M. Cushing poured out stern warnings in rolling bass tones as the senior monk, and Sarah Asmar and Erica Brookhyser gamboled merrily as a pair of harlots-in-training. Tenor Mark Thomsen made something out of the thankless part of Nicias, the playboy philosopher who discovers, too late, that he loves Thais as much as he has professed to. Violinist Sandra Kott played the famous ''Meditation" depicting Thais's conversion with simplicity and feeling.
