SISTERHOOD.("Little Women")

Mark Adamo's "Little Women," an adaptation of the eternally adaptable Louisa May Alcott classic, opened at Glimmerglass Opera, in Cooperstown, New York, over the July 4th weekend. In many respects, it fulfills a stereotype of American opera which has become all too familiar: here is yet another unadventurous musicalization of a famous novel, movie, or play, obeying to the letter what might be called the Aunt Jemima instant-opera recipe, according to which three dollops of tonality and two pinches of dissonance are folded into a bowl of finely ground literature. Adamo's "Little Women" might have been written almost anytime in the previous century, and it aches with nostalgia for an ideal nineteenth century that never was. But, on its own terms, it is a beautifully crafted work, and, as a first opera, it shows remarkable confidence. Adamo is a spirited, fast-witted composer, and if he can stop himself from writing more Merchant and Ivory sing-alongs he ought to have a major career.

Adamo's "Little Women" is not exactly new, and that is what is newsworthy: it has shown staying power. Since its world premiere, at the Houston Grand Opera, in 1998, it has received more than a dozen stagings throughout the country, including productions by Opera Omaha and Opera in the Ozarks. It has even turned up on PBS, which tends to like its tenors in threes. Decades have passed since an American work has been allowed to reach out to audiences in this way. I say "allowed" because there are other pieces that have never been given a chance. John Adams's "Nixon in China" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," which have gripped audiences elsewhere in the world, vanished from American stages shortly after their premieres. (Incidentally, Adams, who said two years ago that he was ready to give up on opera altogether, has decided to return to the fray, with a work about the atom bomb and the Cold War. Godspeed.)

Why "Little Women"? Autobiographical young-adult narratives are historically not the kind that have set fire to the opera stage. "Don Giovanni," "Rigoletto," "Tristan and Isolde," "Peter Grimes": these are vibrant, violent stories, seething with lunacy and lust. It is curious, given the proven taste of the operagoing public, that American composers so often gravitate in the opposite direction, toward literary classics in which atmosphere dominates over action. Even "A Streetcar Named Desire"--set to music by Andre Previn a few years ago--pales in sheer incident next to red-meat bel canto; Verdi would have found the play insufferably slow. We are drawn to the idea of putting "Streetcar," "The Great Gatsby," or "Little Women" in an opera house because we think we want to experience a favorite text suffused with music--but that is not what opera is. Opera is anti-poetical, anti-novelistic, anti-intellectual. The greatest librettos are those that make us laugh out loud when we see them written down.

Nonetheless, Adamo, who served as his own librettist on "Little Women," does a brilliant job of molding Alcott's tale into operatic form. He treats "Little Women" as a story of adult addiction to nostalgia and regret; the heroine, Jo, can't surrender either the fact of her childhood or its idyllic aura. "The conflict of 'Little Women,' " Adamo writes in a program note, "is Jo versus the passage of time." Whether or not that's true, the composer is certain of himself, and therefore leagues ahead of better-known rivals who have tackled famous subjects without quite knowing what to do with them. Adamo does not seem like a musical tourist in a literary place; he lives here. He zips from one scene to another with cinematic speed but is not afraid to linger over baldly melodramatic touches, such as the telegram that announces the terminal illness of Jo's sister ...