For those of us who greatly admired mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the emotional overlay at the premiere of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Orfeo ed Euridice” by Christoph Willibald Gluck on Wednesday evening was especially poignant. Hunt Lieberson died last year and undoubtedly would have made for a powerful and beautiful Orfeo, taking her rightful place among the best performers of the role in memory: Grace Bumbry, Kathleen Ferrier, and Janet Baker.

Gluck composed the role for contralto castrato, but later recast it for tenor. The standard performing version, fashioned by Hector Berlioz, was conceived for the deep female voice of Pauline Viardot-Garcia who, along with her sister Malibran, dominated the vocal scene in the middle of the 19th century. When Hunt Lieberson, to whose memory this production is officially dedicated, passed, the choice of her replacement was hotly debated.

Many hoped for the casting of the Polish contralto Ewa Podlés, but the Met went in a totally different direction, hiring countertenor David Daniels, already scheduled for the run of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” for the part. Imagine, a man playing a man! Sadly, though Mr. Daniels did a creditable job on opening night, he was ultimately a disappointment, often sounding strained and tired, and never successfully fashioning a smooth lyrical line. In Che farò senza Euridice, phrases were clipped and entrances tentative. His pitch control was admirable, but for a role with such deep currents of emotion, he was maddeningly phlegmatic.

One might have surmised that this coldness was in sympathy with James Levine’s strict Classical conception of the work. Mr. Levine learned his proportions from George Szell and had his magnificent ensemble playing with the most balanced of approaches. An excision of vocal feeling could have been explained away but for the fact that the other two singers this evening — there is sometimes a fourth character called the Happy Shade, but she did not appear in this rendition — were both accomplished actresses of the voice who elicited the most profound of empathetic responses.

Maija Kovalevska dazzled as Euridice, and it was gratifying to hear a lower tessitura, even though we had to wait until Act III. She has a very powerful instrument with superb resonance and completely overmatched Mr. Daniels in their duets. Young, tall, and attractive, she seems destined for stardom.

Heidi Grant Murphy quite literally stole the show as Amor. Her outfit was right on target; dressed by Isaac Mizrahi in a pink polo shirt, khaki high-water pants, bobby socks, and tennis shoes, she spectacularly appeared in the rafters and flew through her first scene on wires. Her voice was brilliantly campanilian, and her physicality was charming; she pushed around Allen Moyer’s huge sets to hilarious effect. She was the gamin with whom everyone fell instantly in love.

The Met chorus was its usual radiant self, with the added delight of each member being dressed as a different historical character — Lincoln, Gandhi, Shakespeare, etc. It must have been great fun to line them all up one day and decide who should play whom.

Like Mr. Mizrahi, director-choreographer Mark Morris has worked quite successfully at the New York City Opera, but was making his Met debut this evening. He filled this show with dance. I wouldn’t presume to comment on the terpsichorean quality of the troupe, but they did seem to fit the general theatrical conception. Their constant circular motion meshed perfectly with the rounded scenery, perhaps a bit more Dante than Greek, but reasonably evocative of the afterlife.

And how did Mr. Levine’s orchestra do in the Dance of the Blessed Spirits, the most affecting music of the mid-18th century? Were the flute solos as diaphanously thrilling as in the old Toscanini recordings? Well, actually no, as this entire number was cut from this performance, the program booklet explaining that Mr. Morris felt it would “break the flow of the opera.” Small wonder that so many Met fans are already waxing nostalgic about the halcyon days of last season, when musical decisions were still being made by the conductor.

– Fred Kirshnit

The Movement Alongside the Music

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s operas are filled with music written especially for dance, particularly the versions prepared for production in Paris. But in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice,” which had its premiere Wednesday night, dance, courtesy of Mark Morris, was the production’s weakest element. Or perhaps weak is not the right word — extraneous might be more like it.

There was glorious singing and instrumental playing under the baton of James Levine. And there was coherent staging by Mr. Morris, who has previously staged the opera in Seattle. But Mr. Morris’s choreography and the participation of virtually the entirety of his dance company added little to the production.

The Met’s new production is influenced by, or cognizant of, earlier cinematic treatments of the tale, namely Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film and the 1959 “Black Orpheus,” set in the Brazilian Carnival.

In 1936, Balanchine choreographed a Met production of “Orfeo” that put all the singers, chorus, and leads in the pit, while his dancers performed the onstage action. Like Balanchine, Mr. Morris has used his own dance company, augmented by four dancers from the Met’s own troupe, but here the singing leads are integral to the action, while the chorus stays seated or sometimes standing in Allen Moyer’s grey amphitheater tiers.

Mr. Morris’s dancers are sometimes used to assist in the narrative action or comment or illustrate the libretto. They interact with the singers, and there is occasional unanimity between chorus and dancers. And at these times they blend into the actions. When the dancers are center stage, however, one couldn’t help wonder what they were doing in the production. The choreography is almost completely drained of Baroque tint, even when Mr. Morris uses a soft-edged dialect of the language of ballet, itself a child of the Baroque.

Musically, Mr. Morris and Gluck are not a perfect fit, because of the choreographer’s preference for responding to notes as much as phrases; this approach tends to fracture Gluck’s long-breathed melodic line with a gratuitous amount of ticks and twitches. Dance doesn’t have to conform to its musical partners, and there can be welcome tension in opposition. But here there is no question that Gluck is dominant and is to be ignored at a choreographer’s peril. Perhaps it’s a question of context: What would be welcome on Mr. Morris’s own stage becomes intrusive in this environment.

This was particularly true during the finale, where the magnificent music and choral singing dwarfed the set pieces performed by the Morris company. In these closing celebratory dances, which follow the restoration of Euridice to Orfeo, Mr. Morris has taken the post-modern prerogative of conforming to a hallowed score only by observing the phrase lengths and rhythms. There are dips and twirls suggesting pop dances of the 1940s such as the Lindy, as well as the stomping accompaniments of a hoedown.

Mr. Morris’s direction demonstrated his solid staging abilities, especially in the first scene in which Orfeo repeatedly runs to the front of the stage as he appeals for succor from his grief. Countertenor David Daniels interpreted the role as a mensch whose frustration and bereavement are conveyed with a pleading, almost adolescent urgency, and this made for an effective contrast to his voice’s high register.

Mr. Moyer’s set design is stylishly timeless. An earth-toned elliptical wall, stippled to let stars shine through at times, encloses the tiers occupied by the chorus. The cylinder is closed by an enormous, appropriately black link when Mr. Daniels and Maija Kovalevska as Euridice make their fraught ascent out of Hades, hewing a path cut into what suggests a mountain peak or outcropping (an improvement over a similar piece in Mr. Moyer’s design for Mr. Morris’s “Sylvia,” seen in New York last summer). Here the large, resonant, eloquent voices of Mr. Daniels and Ms. Kovalevska took you into the score’s essentials and dwarfed any other consideration.

– Joel Lobenthal

Until May 12 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).