Editor's note: Tenor Joshua Collier will replace Theo Cohen as Alfredo. ‘Scilla Cristiano is one of the best lyric sopranos in the world,” says Joshua Collier, artistic director of Opera Vermont.

Playful and satirical, the Marx Brothers’ 1935 A Night at the Opera pokes fun at opera’s elitism while celebrating its spectacle, capturing the era’s ambivalence toward “high” art forms seen as both ...