Musing on all those “new” operas that recycle material already familiar from other media, The New York Times classical music critic Zachary Woolfe recently had this to say: “These days, it’s remarkable to sit at a premiere and be able to think, with admiration, ‘Here are imaginations at work’ instead of ‘I’d rather be watching the movie.’” With Fanny and Alexander (sung in English), the New York-based Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson and his Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based librettist Royce Vavrek boldly defy the risks of adaptation. The source is Ingmar Bergman’s semi-autobiographical valedictory family saga of 1982, conceived by the master as a miniseries that clocked in at 312 minutes, but originally released in theaters as an Oscar-winning 188-minute feature. In either form, it ranks with the most adored cinematic achievements of all time. Born into a theatrical family of flamboyant personalities, extravagant appetites, and louche morals, the eponymous siblings see their lives take a turn for the Gothic when death strikes down their father and their mother quickly remarries. Big names in the cast of 14 include Sasha Cooke as the widowed Emilie; Thomas Hampson as her second husband, the disciplinarian-to-the-point-of-the-sadistic Bishop Edward Vergerus; and Anne Sofie von Otter as the maid Justina, a bit player who gets Alexander in extra big trouble with his stepdad. The fashionable Ivo van Hove—no practitioner of the “homage”—directs. —Matthew Gurewitsch