Katerina Beranova (standing) & Liliana Rugiero. Photo by Jack Vartoogian.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the seven-year-old Venice Baroque Orchestra (VOB) presented the American stage premiere of George Frideric Handel rarity “Siroe” (1728), with libretto by Pietro Metastasio and Nicola Haym, at the Harvey Theater on April 17. With VOB director and conductor Andrea Marcon and stage director Jorge Lavelli presiding, an expressive ensemble of six, with flexible voices, capable of negotiating high coloratura ornaments, invested the performance with remarkable vitality and immediacy, readily illuminating the knotty plot and making three hours of arias and recitatives fly by.

“Siroe” tells a tale of intrigue swirling around the King of Persia, Cosroe (bass-baritone Vita Priante), and his older son and heir apparent, Siroe (mezzo-soprano Liliana Rugiero). Emira (soprano Katerina Beranova), loved by Siroe and plotting to avenge the death of her father, killed by Cosroe, disguises herself as a man and secures a position of power and influence in Cosroe’s court. Siroe’s brother, Medarse (countertenor Roberto Balconi), plans to seize the throne for himself. Laodice (soprano Simone Kermes), Cosroe’s lover, makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Siroe and denounces him to his father. The King, aging, tormented and scarcely able to tell his enemies from those who are loyal, condemns Siroe to die, but Arasse (bass-baritone Matthew Burns), his general and Laodice’s brother, rescues the prince and the opera ends with virtue rewarded and villainy forgiven.

Lavelli shifted the action to early 20 ^th century Italy, with white makeup and dress clothes and soldiers’ uniforms, devised by costumer Francesco Zito, that evoked the silent film era. There were steamy love scenes aplenty and an ominous octet of silent soldiers in attendance. Cast members did not hesitate to sing facing upstage or employ the slenderest thread of voice, confident they would be heard, or begin solos lying flat on their backs. English-language titles projected above the stage could be consulted during this unfamiliar work, but the singers, clearly communicating their intentions and moods, soon commanded full attention again.

Sharing the stage with the orchestra—and a few sticks of furniture—in this unconventional production, singers often pierced the fourth wall, addressing arias directly to the audience or walking in our midst. Playing Laodice as a silver screen vamp, Kermes draped her cape over this writer and sang some lines of her first aria to me. (Did she know where the press was sitting?) In Act Two, she sang her languid “Mi lagnerò tacendo” (“I lament in silence”) to Maestro Marcon and selected instrumentalists. (Gioachino Rossini, a century later, was so enamored of this verse that he composed some four dozen settings of it.)

The conductor got into the act, supporting Rugiero’s Siroe during an interrogation in the glare of a spotlight. Lutenist Evangelina Mascardi joined Siroe downstage for the aria in which he magnanimously forgave his foes and a quintet of string players surrounded the ensemble for the happy finale.

BAM Harvey Theater 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

April 17, 20, 23 & 24 at 7:30 pm