sprightliness

Claire Saunders gives Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress, a sprightliness and sass that styles her as a romantic second-string diva who feels trapped in her life, particularly her marriage.

Its sprightliness in a sober time recalls Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, written three decades earlier, which the Philharmonic played under van Zweden in February.

Yet Johnson’s overall sprightliness covers a ground bass of melancholy and lament.

She and Curran take possession of the tale and save it with sprightliness; their smiles arise without warning.

Even the encores seemed oddly distanced: three chestnuts — Schumann’s “Träumerei,” Debussy’s “Golliwog’s Cakewalk,” played with rubbery sprightliness, and a Chopin waltz — followed by a composition of his own.