Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. Not this time.

When the Met introduced Mark Morris’s incoherent, stubbornly iconoclastic staging of Orfeo ed Euridice in 2007, one could admire the bad boy’s whimsy while regretting his self-indulgence. When the production returned on Friday, one could only wince.

Glamour and sweetness: Danielle de Niese

Morris, it would seem, cares too much about modernist gimmickry and too little about expressive pathos. The scheme remains unchanged. Allen Moyer’s set places 90-plus choristers, fussily dressed by Isaac Mizrahi, in a three-tier amphitheatre. In an effort to underscore the timeless quality of the Orpheus legend, everyone impersonates a different iconic figure. Ah, there’s Moses. There’s Jimi Hendrix. There’s Gandhi. There are Salome, Maria Callas, Eva Perón, Charlie Chaplin, Hiawatha... Identifying the characters can be an amusing game, but it hardly helps focus the central drama. Not incidentally, the motley crew occasionally practices unison semaphore, each obscure gesture no doubt bearing a profound message.

Morris populates the forestage with a busy ensemble of street people in contemporary mufti. They perform disorderly dancerly rituals that often contradict both the pulse and the impulse of Gluck’s wondrous score. Poor Orfeo tends to get lost in the choreographic shuffle. When he tries to rescue Euridice from Hades he is trapped, also partially obscured, on a clumsy ramp in a hideously glitzy cave. Oh, nearly forgot. Amor, a  terminally cute deus-ex-machina, bears winglets attached to his – actually her – polo shirt and ascends from heaven on Peter Pan wires.

Luckily, the show (term used advisedly) sounds better than it looks. James Levine defends the composer with equal parts eloquence and elegance in the pit. Danielle de Niese exudes sweetness as a glamour-puss Euridice. Heidi Grant Murphy preens and peeps pertly as Amor. And, succeeding an awkwardly cast countertenor as Orfeo, Stephanie Blythe sings with glorious mezzo-soprano tone, wide-ranging breadth and focused passion. She clutches the hero’s prop-guitar earnestly, and, though she cannot claim the traditional physique du rôle, sustains dignity against the theatrical odds.

Thank goodness for Stephanie Blythe, and vice-versa.

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