To Uppsala Castle now, where we drop in on Sweden’s Queen Christina, widely known in her heyday as the Minerva of the North. Raised as a prince by order of her father Gustav II Adolph, who died in battle while she was still a child, Christina was her country’s queen elect before she turned six. The opera catches up with “the boy queen” in 1649, now in her 20s, struggling with her sexuality, her faith, and the demands of government. Who better to sort her out than René (“I think, therefore I am”) Descartes, whom she has summoned from Paris? Spoiler alert: for reasons that remain nebulous, Christina was to confound all Europe by abdicating in 1654. If Michel Marc Bouchard’s libretto will lift the veil a little, at least speculatively, it will ultimately fall to Julien Bilodeau’s music to make us believe. Kirsten MacKinnon heads the premiere cast, ceding the spotlight to Kirsten LeBlanc on February 7 for one night only. —Matthew Gurewitsch