Holy smoke! The Peasant Wars are raging, the Anabaptists have assembled to crown their fake Holy One, and suddenly a woman’s voice rings through the cathedral, crying “My son!” Will the heretics’ whole house of cards come tumbling down? Find out when the Fisher Center stages an operatic tour de force that Giacomo Meyerbeer’s contemporaries ranked with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Okay, so Le Prophète has been downgraded since legendary tenors like Jean de Rezske and Enrico Caruso championed the title role. Yet in a committed performance, the pageantry, the melodrama, and the mastery of atmosphere remain tremendous. Robert Watson assays the juicy tenor role of the former innkeeper Jean of Leyden, opposite Jennifer Feinstein as his mother, Fidès, a once-iconic role last sung at the Met in 1979 by the irreplaceable Marilyn Horne. For an advance taste of the score’s hypnotic powers, ferret out Franz Liszt’s Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, a fantasia for organ and orchestra built on the sinuous, deeply sinister hymn sung by the opera’s wandering missionaries. (That wasn’t Liszt’s only tribute to Meyerbeer; there are also piano paraphrases of other highlights from the score.) Listeners at home, take note: livestreams of Le Prophète are scheduled for the performances of July 31 and August 5. What’s more, CDs documenting a live broadcast of Le Prophète from last year’s Festival d’Aix-en-Provence drop on the LSO Live label on June 28. John Osborn stars as Jean, opposite the Fidès of the extraordinary Elizabeth DeShong, who sings in tones of royal purple. Conducted by Leon Botstein. —Matthew Gurewitsch