Opera was the bright, shiny new court entertainment when Claudio Monteverdi cooked up the immortal Orfeo in Mantua. Santa Fe molds the timeless masterpiece to contemporary sensibilities in a production by Yuval Sharon, who stages opera the way Tommy played pinball. For added anachronistic spice, the fashionable Nico Muhly has re-orchestrated the score. The Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón—having taken his thrilling but ruinous shot at meat-and-potatoes Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, etc.—marches to his own eccentric drum these days, popping up in roles like Mozart’s Papageno (an undemanding sing written for a baritone), Wagner’s fast-talking fire god Loge, and now Orfeo, paragon of vocal eloquence. —Matthew Gurewitsch