Être ou ne pas être? In cooperation with the Opéra Comique, Paris, Louis Langrée leads the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus in a touring stage production of Ambroise Thomas’s atmospheric setting of Shakespeare’s Danish tragedy. Think of it as the bookend to Gounod’s Faust: a lighter intellectual lift than its literary source, but theatrically canny, with ravishing tunes. The mesmerizing French baritone Stéphane Dégout takes the title role, which includes a rousing drinking song. Jodie Devos, a dazzling French soprano, sings Ophélie. Her Mad Scene, embellished with a Moorish-scented boléro, rivals Lucie de Lammermoor’s. —Matthew Gurewitsch