A Provocative Twist on the Bible & the Baroque

"Open up. Let me see those chompers," soprano Rebecca Duren demanded of her co-star, countertenor Brian Cummings. "I don't want a fake opera kiss. I want a full-on, open-mouth kiss."

Cummings obliged. But the ensuing embrace got a little complicated.

"Wait," Duren said, dropping her hands to her side. "I need to see how guys hug."

Timothy Nelson, the director, stepped forward and awkwardly wrapped his arms around Cummings, trying out different hand positions while Duren watched, running her fingers through her freshly cropped hair. Still not satisfied, she asked who was the dominant male in the relationship.

This scene, which played out last week in the basement of a South Baltimore church, does not reflect the usual protocol at an opera rehearsal. But American Opera Theater, which is presenting the rarely done 17th-century opera "David et Jonathas" by Marc-Antoine Charpentier tonight through Sunday at Georgetown University's Gonda Theatre, is not your average regional opera company. Run with an anti-establishment spirit by Nelson, its 28-year-old founder, the troupe aspires to high musical standards but will go to great lengths to keep the audience watching.

This production of "David et Jonathas" represents a double gamble for the small group. It is going on next week to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York's temple of alternative highbrow entertainment. And it portrays two ancient Hebrew warriors -- the young Goliath-slayer (played by Cummings) and his best friend, the prince Jonathan (played by Duren, who cut her shoulder-length hair for the role) -- as gay lovers.

Revisionist stagings are the norm for Nelson, who formed the company in 2002, when he was fresh out of Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory. Bored with the East Coast early-music scene, he and his friends -- including Duren, lighting designer Kel Millionie and harpsichordist Adam Pearl -- struck out on their own, calling themselves Ignoti Dei Opera until they decided that the name was pretentious and, Duren notes, "tough to pronounce."

AOT has presented a mix of brilliant and bizarre early-music productions in the years since. Most successful was Handel's "Acis and Galatea" in 2007, re-imagined by Nelson as a circus act and calling for Duren to sing upside down. Shortly thereafter, Nelson moved to Barcelona, following his partner, a Spanish violinist. He continues to run AOT long-distance, holding meetings with his board over the Internet telephone service Skype. Last fall the company began a three-year residency at Gonda Theatre; in December it experimented with dramatizing Handel's "Messiah" (Washington Post reviewer Joe Banno found Nelson's decision to bludgeon and crucify an angel at Christmastime "an interesting notion").

Nelson's musicians, a growing coterie of respected early-music singers and instrumentalists, keep coming back for more. Many of the "David et Jonathas" cast members are reprising roles from a 2005 staging that Nelson has retroactively started calling "a workshop." Duren appeared in a supporting role then; she eagerly agreed to star this time around, in what Nelson is billing as the work's professional, fully staged American premiere.

"I really don't like opera much," Duren said. "I just like doing this."

Charpentier, a French composer of mostly sacred music, wrote "David et Jonathas" in 1688 -- as, in effect, the spring musical for College Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit seminary in Paris. The piece was originally conceived as a set of musical interludes to alternate with three hours of Latin readings, based on the biblical story; but the spoken text is long lost. What remains is a libretto that Nelson calls "psychological character reflections," which suits him well. "I don't like linear narrative," he says. "It's the bane of my existence."

This is all very fine and postmodern, but potentially confusing to viewers.