A decade ago, the intrepid Paola Prestini—impresario and composer extraordinaire—transformed the National Sawdust Company in Brooklyn into a clubhouse for progressive music-making, retaining all but the last word of the factory’s historic name. To celebrate its aluminum anniversary, Prestini has programmed, for the very first time, a full-length work of her own. The opera Silent Light follows the filmmaker Carlos Reygada’s luminous yet legendarily austere chronicle of adultery among Mennonites in northern Mexico (who knew?). “Engaging the aural, visual, and olfactory, and harnessing the uniqueness of National Sawdust’s architecture and Meyer constellation sound system,” the marketing copy tells us, “the production immerses audiences in a socially cloistered and sensuously expansive environment.” Know that the production is by Thaddeus Strassberger, who devised a Salome for the Arizona Opera involving an onstage banquet with premium seating onstage. That particular extravagance fell prey to the pandemic, but we can dream, can’t we? No food is promised for Silent Light, but note the appeal this time to the audience’s sense of smell. —Matthew Gurewitsch