Medea—the witch who will stop at nothing to win her man, or, when he betrays her, to destroy him. Maria Callas was the Medea of her age, so much so that when she retired the opera by Luigi Cherubini, the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini reunited her with the character in her one and only talkie. Mounting the Cherubini for the first time, the Metropolitan Opera follows the Callas precedent: the edition is in Italian rather than the original French, with recitatives rather than the original spoken dialogue. Such, we hear, was the preference of Sondra Radvanovsky, who has more than earned her spurs with Met audiences in the trifecta of Donizetti’s Tudor queens. Certain musicologists aren’t happy, but they don’t sell tickets. Matthew Polenzani co-stars as Jason, father to Medea’s ill-starred children. —Matthew Gurewitsch