It seems a thing incredible but fifty years ago Richard Strauss was regarded as the wunderkind composer of a few tone poems, three notable operas (all produced before the First World War) and then nothing notable during forty years of repetitious senility. Even Ariadne auf Naxos, today one of the most popular works in the repertory, was little known outside the Germanophone world, and as for the non-Hofmannsthal works, forget them. Today it is rare that any season passes without major revivals of those late works by one or two of America’s leading companies, and they are frequently encountered on any European sojourn.

Ripeness is all. There has been a maturing of the taste for once-forbidding harmonies in the opera-going public (Berg and Britten and Stravinsky and Janacek, now also familiar and beloved, were once hard sells); too, there is the mediocrity of most contemporary opera composition in comparison to Strauss’s ever-flowing professionalism and elegance of voice setting.

And, damn it, he knew, as too few composers do today, what changes needed to be made to make a tale into theater. The Straussian well is not exactly dry, but rarer and rarer are his operas that go unheard-of or unheard. (Aside from Die Schweigsame Frau, which I missed at the New York City Opera in its heyday, I’ve encountered all the rest, from Guntram to Friedenstag.)

So the choice of Strauss’s last grand opera and mythological fable, Die Liebe der Danaë, which has never been staged before in the New York area, for the annual summer offering of the Bard Festival in Annandale-on-Hudson was ideal. Leon Botstein knew the score, having already conducted a concert version at Fisher Hall starring Lauren Flanigan, and even he was preceded by Eve Queler, who led a Carnegie Hall performance with Rosalind Plowright, memorably gowned in gold lamé. (Queler has also given us New York’s only Guntram.)

Danaë is making the rounds of European festivals and repertories. Its vocal difficulties are not insurmountable for those accustomed to the exalted Straussian tessitura. Its mishmash plot boils down to a simple fable in the end, the same one Dr. Dulcamara sings in the party scene of L’Elisir d’amore: A sensible girl, given the choice between wealth and true love, all other things being equal, will choose love.

All other things are never equal of course, and Danaë’s choice (in the opera, not in Myth) is between an affair of limited duration with a gold-strewing god and all the wealth and perks (and outraged rivals) such a thing entails, and the enduring love of a poor man, the formerly-rich King Midas. The shower of gold was a dream (beautifully staged at Bard), and Midas’s golden touch rendered her lifeless; she chooses reality, even if it means settling in a hut (at Bard, trailer park, living in a tiny blue Pacer). Jupiter accepts that the world of young love is no longer his, rather as Strauss too accepted his advancing years. (He was 74, and expected no good of the oncoming World War II.)

Jupiter is, by general consent, the noblest baritone role in Strauss, and though Danaë and Midas get the fireworks (and the small roles demand top prima donna chops, as usual), it is Jupiter whom we remember most fondly. He is Strauss’s Prospero, bidding farewell to his craft. No, Strauss didn’t quite mean it – Capriccio was still to come – but that’s a coda. The great career ended with Danaë, which was not premiered till after his death.

This was the last of Strauss in his heyday. We were all eager to hear it and see it; my prediction, after this performance, is we haven’t heard the last of it.

Bard’s production by Kevin Newbury in sets by Rafael Viñoly and Mimi Lien, mostly backdrops of giant collaged architectural photographs (those Doric columns? The Subtreasury near Wall Street. The topless towers? Manhattan skyscrapers, with Harbor views and glints of gold) departed from the norms of modern “updated” regie stagings in that they actually helped tell the story of the opera being sung, crisply and directly. There were humorous modern references not out of place in a comic fable but no intrusions for the sake of someone’s tiresome agenda. For New York opera-goers, this is a welcome relief.

The choreography by Ken Roht was efficient and clear, the lighting by D.M. Wood charming, but Jessica Jahn’s costumes really went to town, from the glittering, contrasting poofy gowns of Danaë’s four rivals for Jupiter’s affections (each dress, like her orchestration, subtly hinting at her mythical fate) to the jeans and work shirts of the fallen figures in the last act: always something to provide a grin, no intrusive tangents.

The sets also had the effect of pushing the singers to the very front of the stage apron, a popular trend which allows voices to sound bigger than they are and to fill a house over a heavy orchestra. The Bard stage is narrow anyway, the Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center high and close, and these were young voices howling a lot of Strauss; most of them sounded very good at these quarters. But this does not allow us to judge their staying power for a full-sized role in a full-sized house.

Megan Miller, who won the Met Auditions a couple of years ago and is singing Mozart, Strauss and Wagner all over the place, is a tall, handsome woman and a bit Junoesque (in the sense of majestic) – when she’s in the traditional gold or silver, of course, but also in white-trash blue jeans and trainers for the finale. Her voice has the French horn colors of a true Strauss soprano, and packs the necessary walloping edge.

She lacked, on the July 31st< performance, ideal security, total control that will come with time and care; there were moments when the breath faded under a consequently drooping phrase. But the ingredients for a great Ariadne, Helena, Daphne are here. She was well-matched in one of those soprano-soprano duets Strauss so loved to compose by Sarah Jane McMahon in the brief, underwritten role of Xanthe.

Also up to snuff were Danaë’s rivals for Olympian affection, portrayed with comic flair and melodious glee by Aurora Sein Perry, Camille Zamora, Jamie Van Eyck and Rebecca Ringle, the last (Leda) being the plummy standout because her part is written almost for contralto and all the others are high. Strauss had written many vocal trios for his ladies but no quartets before; he had great fun with the experiment. Their silly songs and frilly frocks while many a blissful moment.

Roger Honeywell sang the tormented role of Midas, who in this version must pretend he is not Midas when wooing Danaë for the faux-Midas, Jupiter. (In myth, of course, they never met at all.) Strauss’s lifelong animus for tenors seemed to have faded a bit by 1938 when he was beginning this opera: Unlike Bacchus and Apollo, Midas is not obliged to near hara-kiri. Still: a Strauss tenor must go up and stay up, in flames if necessary, rather like Icarus in a myth Strauss never got around to. (No dames in that one.)

Honeywell appears to have the range and the lung power; better, in performance, he knows when to just stop singing and mouth air rather than squawk when to keep up with Miss Miller was simply beyond him. Nor did the essentially sweet quality of his voice go sour when he had more grateful notes to sing, as in his duet with Jupiter.

The great role in this opera, the heroic anti-hero if you will, is the god who desires Danaë (and all other women) but comes to realize his roaming days are past. It is a role of a man (or god) coming to peaceable terms with the passing of youth, in contrast, we might say, to Don Giovanni, who would rather not exist at all on such terms.

But sunsets are beautiful, and Strauss finally let his inspiration flow into the bass-baritone register – keeping some Olympian self-satisfaction in reserve for the impresario in Capriccio. Carsten Wittmoser sings many “philosophical” roles – Seneca, Sarastro, Landgraf, Banquo – as well as, in the opposite corner, Hoffmann’s villains and Sparafucile.

His is not an overwhelming sound, but in this emotionally various role he produces a ruminating, angry, passionate, thoughtful performance that never fails to hold our attention. Jupiter is a god who learns a lesson and changes his mind, which is curious enough; Strauss made him the benign concluder of the story and Wittmoser gave his temperament a lieder-singer’s subtle inflexions.

In the rest of the cast, Dennis Petersen was effective as Danaë’s improvident father but Jud Perry had a rough night as Merkur, wings on his trainers but not on his vocal cords. Under Botstein, the American Symphony Orchestra never lost the rhythmic swing and brilliantly varied color that carries one through what might, in hands of another composer, have been a tedious and repetitive story, and the chorus sang as though they believed every fabulous note of it. It was a special event, a discovery. But we haven’t heard the last of this opera.

Photo: Todd Norwood (top), Corey Weaver (middle).