The Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s 80-minute opera Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears) unfolds chiefly in the head of the aged actress Margarita Xirgu (Angel Blue), in her youth a muse to the incendiary Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca (Daniela Mack). Beginning in pulsating flamenco, the score dissolves in the end to an ethereal trio inspired by the precedent of Richard Strauss in Der Rosenkavalier, the third voice in Golijov’s mix being that of Nuria, Xirgu’s brilliant protégée. The flamenco singer Alfredo Tejado appears (but not in the trio) as the Falangist politician who takes charge of Lorca’s execution, an event that David Henry Hwang’s libretto borrows from the historic record. What’s the whole fantasy about? Oh, just life, death, art, self-immolation. Clairvoyantly performed, as in Robert Spano’s live Deutsche Grammophon recording of 2006 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Dawn Upshaw as Xirgu, Golijov’s polystylistic collage is a head trip of a high order. At the Met, Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducts, hopefully more persuasively than at the New York premiere that took place around the same time as the Atlanta performances and with the same principals. The Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, a veteran of Cirque du Soleil, is in charge of the production, which should be quite the corker. —Matthew Gurewitsch