Fuchs explores its dichotomies clear-mindedly and without sensationalism in a staging‚ her finest of recent years‚ that is at its most unbearable when it is most restrained.

One can imagine disastrous productions of the piece‚ but there’s a bravery and integrity to Olivia Fuchs’s staging that makes the evening utterly compelling‚ however gut-wrenching it may be along the way.

Olivia Fuchs’s production fully faced up to the plot’s unpleasantness‚ emphasizing poor Iris’s vulnerability and innocence without fetishizing or aestheticizing it‚ underlining the cynical heartlessness of the opera’s male characters and the brutality of the world it engenders.