Richard Strauss’s seldom performed one-act gem Daphne surfaces at Seattle Opera in concert, which leaves the bulk of the mythological action to a listener’s imagination. And that’s not such a bad thing; just picture Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Baroque marble of Apollo chasing a nymph as she morphs into a tree. In the opera, Daphne has an unwanted human admirer as well: the shepherd Leukippos, whom Apollo strikes down at a ritual weirdly reminiscent of The Bacchae. Strauss’s score for this enigmatic fable combines exquisite, cut-crystal flights for the soprano with swells of orchestral melody that seem to flow from the depths of the earth. Heidi Stober takes the ornate yet achingly lyrical soprano title role, opposite the tenors Miles Mykkanen as the hapless Leukippos and David Butt Philip as the blazing, rather Wagnerian Apollo. Melody Wilson and Matthew Rose take the oracular, preternaturally low-lying roles of Daphne’s parents Gaea and Peneios. The conductor, in his Seattle Opera debut, is David Afkham, an aristocrat of the podium whose appearances in this country are all too rare. —Matthew Gurewitsch