Opera comes to the venerable Williamstown Theatre Festival for the first time with a rare revival of Samuel Barber’s long-forgotten instant hit of 1958, Vanessa. The libretto by Barber’s fellow composer and life partner Gian Carlo Menotti centers on the eponymous fading beauty, a Miss Havisham type who has been waiting amid covered mirrors for the lover who left her 20 years ago. A guy shows up with the right name but he’s next-generation, and his dad is dead. A tangentially Œdipal pas de trois ensues, also involving Vanessa’s receptive niece. The oft-repeated claim that the creepy scenario follows material in the Seven Gothic Tales of “Isak Dinesen”—nom de plume of the Danish baroness Karen Blixen—is false, though the Dinesen sensibility may well have been an inspiration. For the record, Blixen attended the Metropolitan Opera premiere but bowed out early, pleading unwellness (and never apologizing to the hurt composer). Vanessa in the Berkshires has been entrusted to Heartbeat Opera, which crunches grand opera to chamber proportions, replacing the orchestra with customized instrumental combos often as illuminating as they are off-the-wall (Salome with eight multitasking clarinetists plus two on percussion? Whoa! The wizard in chief of these metamorphoses is Dan Schlosberg). To direct, Williamstown has engaged R. B. Schlather, a critics’ darling for his community-based, stripped-down Handel productions in Hudson, New York, 120 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. A daring pairing. —Matthew Gurewitsch