Remember Our Town? Remember Emily Gibbs, née Webb, who dies too young and goes back for another look at the life of the living? In Guercœur, the mystical tapestry by “the French Bruckner” Albéric Magnard (1865–1914), a slain medieval kinglet returns to save his people, which is admittedly a somewhat different errand. It doesn’t go well. For one thing, his best friend and his wife are now lovers. For another, he is slain for a second time. Back on the Far Side, the Goddess of Truth comforts Guercœur with assurances that humankind is approaching the threshold of something wonderful. Just last year, we were astonished to see Magnard’s woo-woo pageant emerge from oblivion at the Opéra National du Rhin in the Alsatian cities of Strasbourg and Mulhouse. Now Frankfurt, 120 miles away as the crow flies, unveils an all-new production of its own, directed by David Hermann, and conducted by Marie Jacquot. The Slovenian baritone Domen Križaj takes the title role, confronting Anna Gabler as Truth, Claudia Mahnke as the bereft Giselle, and AJ Glueckert as Heurtal, Guercœur’s erstwhile buddy, now a budding Viktor Orbán. —Matthew Gurewitsch