From around the world: Charleston, SC. (North America).(two operas at Spoleto Festival USA)

In a world where "ethnic cleansing" has become a familiar phrase and racial hatreds run high, Spoleto Festival USA couldn't have chosen more pertinent operas for its 2003 season than Delibes's Lakme and Handel's Tamerlano. Except for design oddities in the latter--now customary in smaller Spoleto productions--both stagings had a profound emotional impact.

The festival doesn't always link its two operas, but this connection was clear: in both works, cultural and religious clashes between oppressor and oppressed lead to misunderstandings, resentment and death. Both directors updated the works, Lakme to the 1940s and Tamerlano to some unspecified, fairly recent time (the title character dressed like John Gotti), but audiences needed no reminder that they were watching people with loves and hatreds similar to their own.

An all-French team--director Charles Roubaud, designer Bernard Arnould and costumer Katia Duflot--set Lakme in the last years of British rule, amid a densely realistic bamboo grove that resembled a forest prison. The updating didn't affect the atmosphere, except when the Brits drove onstage in a roadster, and it may have provided extra motivation for the Brahmin priest, Nilakantha (sung with fanatical authority by Alain Fondary). Bald-pated and dressed in white robes, he was a venom-spewing anti-Gandhi who sensed the waning of the occupying regime and was eager to expedite its demise.

Lyubov Petrova made her Spoleto debut last year as a sexy, saucy Despina, but Cosi Fan Tutte gave no hint of her range. As Lakme, she provided the complete package: beauty, bearing, understated emotion, clear and elegant coloratura that never got in the way of a heartfelt portrayal. Her Lakme was as innocent as her Despina was cunning, and the look she gave Gerald as he returned to see her die mingled surprise, resignation and bliss.

Fernando de la Mora sang Gerald with the right mixture of wonder and ardor. His solos had French delicacy, his duets with Petrova an Italianate zeal. He and Franco Pomponi (a satisfying Frederic), played off each other like a gentler version of Pinkerton and Sharpless; despite Frederic's warnings, Gerald never understood that Lakme was a flower likely to die if picked by the wrong hands. Sandra Piques Eddy stood out as a rich-voiced Mallika.

Emmanuel Villaume conducted the Spoleto Festival Orchestra with sweep and tenderness that never flagged, despite the misguided ...