In 1966, in his early 40s, the New York-born symphonist Tobias Picker transitioned to opera with the Santa Fe premiere of Emmeline, a Civil War-era reboot of the myth of Œdipus. Talk about auspicious. Handsomely crafted in a retro lingua franca contemporary audiences warmed to, that firstling paved the way for a half dozen other successful titles (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Thérèse Raquin, An American Tragedy …). Branching into artistic administration, Picker engineered a first of another sort at Tulsa Opera in 2019, when he cast the transgender baritone Lucia Lucas as the eponymous rake in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. That encounter, in turn, sparked Picker’s and Lucas’s new Lili Elbe, based on the life of the Danish painter Einar Wegener, the first patient in medical history to undergo gender-affirmation surgery. Following the 2023 world premiere in out-of-the-way St. Gallen, Switzerland, Lili Elba now alights in—where else?—Santa Fe, bringing Picker’s operatic odyssey full circle. No, this isn’t just St. Gallen warmed over. James Robinson is in charge of a new production, with scenic design by Allen Moyer and costumes by Marco Piemontese. Lucas, whose credits also include Wotan, Wagner’s tottering chieftain of the gods in Die Walküre, repeats what is sure to go down as her signature role, opposite Sylvia D’Eramo, from the St. Gallen cast, as Gerda, the wife who liberates Einar’s inner Lili. Roberto Kalb conducts. Oh, and in case you’re flashing on Tom Hooper’s moody romance The Danish Girl, starring an Oscar-nominated Eddie Redmayne, yes, this is the same story—nominally minus the novelistic overlays discernible in the movie. As Lucas told Picker when he approached her about the opera, “That’s my story.” —Matthew Gurewitsch