Written in German, set in a sexy exotic locale, with zesty comic servants as foils to their grandiloquent romantic masters, The Abduction from the Seraglio was Mozart’s first popular smash. Deservedly so, for the action plays neatly and the score is an ark of marvels, from folk ditties to toe-tapping musical-comedy numbers, lofty laments, and virtuoso showstoppers. Yet to social-justice warriors of the present day, the plot is so much sexist and racist claptrap. Pirates capture a noblewoman and her chambermaid, sell them into a harem, where against all odds they preserve their virtue long enough for the lady’s beloved to discover them and penetrate the perimeter. But boo! Their escape is foiled at the last second. Yet the Pasha who holds their lives in his hands sends them on their way, to the volcanic rage of the loose cannon who oversees the harem. It’s predictable that the director Andrea Moses will subject the Orientalist, misogynist text to unsparing “interrogation.” How much this will color the musical performances is hard to predict. We look to the conductor Thomas Guggeis to step up as Mozart’s chief advocate in the mix. Bülent Ceylan plays the Pasha, who has a speaking role. The sopranos are Adela Zaharia as the noble Konstanze, whose wildly florid arias demand everything; and Serafina Starke is Blonde, whose melodies are not so electric though her top notes are higher. The tenors are Siyabonga Maqungo as Konstanze’s beau Belmonte, a stick figure given music of surpassing loveliness, and Michael Laurenz (a former trumpeter) as Belmonte’s peppy sidekick Pedrillo. The bass David Steffens takes his shot at Osmin, who ranges from two octaves below middle C to G above middle C, here and there dispatching coloratura hardly less intricate (at the opposite end of the scale) than the Queen of the Night’s. The list of stars of yesteryear with whom Steffens has studied staggers the imagination. May he do them proud. —Matthew Gurewitsch