Shortly after the terrorist attacks, some people were heard asking whether art is relevant anymore, whether it serves any purpose. "Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart," Yeats writes in "Easter 1916," his poem about the Irish Republican Brotherhood uprising. Hadn’t al-Qaeda’s terrorists reduced themselves to automatons, "hearts with one purpose alone. . . . To trouble the living stream"? Don’t we more than ever, in this post-terrorist culture, need art to reaffirm our humanity?

I mention the terrorists because they turned up in Boston Lyric Opera’s general director Janice Mancini Del Sesto’s welcoming remarks in the program booklet for the Lyric’s production of Rossini’s endearing and enduring Il barbiere di Siviglia ("The Barber of Seville"; remaining performances, at the Shubert, are October 11 and 13), which is perhaps the most beloved comic opera in the repertoire. "After the events of September 11, 2001, we decided that it was important to present a season that would be ‘easy to love.’ " BLO’s previous season included two tragic works on a large scale, Verdi’s Don Carlos and Tod Machover’s Tolstoy opera, Resurrection, along with Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Puccini’s La bohème. There may be a bit of disingenuous retrenchment behind Del Sesto’s apologia. But she’s not entirely off the mark: couldn’t we use some good entertainment? And the "lovable" operas this season — the free performances of Bizet’s Carmen on Boston Common; the Rossini; Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (to advertise this as a "high-speed adventure on the Orient Express" plays down Mozart’s unusual depths of feeling in the context of a silly comedy); perhaps the least familiar of Puccini’s mature operas, the operetta-like La rondine; and Johann Strauss’s real operetta, Die Fledermaus — actually make a pretty strong selection.

But in spite of its considerable musical virtues, this Barber (which Del Sesto refers to as a "new production," though it’s been presented, with different casts, in among other places Ferrara and Baltimore) was so devoid of human emotion, so soulless, it made my flesh creep. Rossini’s lively, living characters — lovers and buffoons — were hardly more than caricatures, automatons put relentlessly through mechanical paces. Where was the necessary humanity that makes this opera "easy to love"?

Director Stefano Vizioli loaded the evening with gags, visual one-liners, but hardly one of them emerged from or related to the music or the drama. In the Lyric’s last Barber, back in 1995, director Laurence Senelick also had too many jokes, but they were all connected to character, so that I not only laughed at the characters’ antics but was also touched by their problems. Senelick found a balance between the "presentational" aspect of the opera (characters defining themselves, confiding their feelings and intentions directly to the audience, as in Shakespeare soliloquies) and the inwardly personal (characters reacting, suffering, figuring out what to do, as in Shakespeare soliloquies).

In this "new" production, I found myself rooting for the villain, Dr. Bartolo, the foolish old doctor who wants to marry his pretty young ward himself — mainly because I was so irritated by the supposedly sympathetic characters, who were played by better singers who seemed to have much more to offer. Bass-baritone Terry Hodges, a regional-opera veteran, wasn’t given anything very original to do, but at least he delivered Bartolo’s familiar pomposity and frustration with a certain sincerity.

Mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore is something of a Rossini specialist. She’s sung Rosina (the ward) at the New York City Opera and Cenerentola (Cinderella) numerous times (at the Met, she replaced Susan Graham as Jordan Baker, the shallow tennis star, in John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby). She has a darkly vivid and richly colorful tone and the chops to do the most florid coloratura; she’s intelligent and attractive (though less so in the bushel of wig and costume her light here was hidden under). Except for a couple of runaway high notes, she sang impressively. But she played Rosina not as a playful minx who had to figure out how to survive the threats to her future happiness but as a smug know-it-all who took none of these threats seriously; she had been in this opera before and knew exactly how it would turn out. She sang much of her big aria of determination, "Una voce poco fa," in bed, some of it lying on her back. Lying back is the last thing the great Rosinas — Conchita Supervia, Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, Cecilia Bartoli (or even the Lyric’s own touching Mika Shigematsu) — or any character faced with a serious challenge should do. As Rosina admits in her aria, she can also be docile and obedient (Vizioli turns this into another joke). She’s learned the rules. Would a respectable 18th-century Sevillana accept a cigarette from a barber?

It got a laugh.

Count Almaviva (Rosina’s aristocratic suitor, who disguises himself as a drunken soldier and an effete music teacher to get closer to her) was sung by African-American tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who has also done this role at La Scala. That’s no surprise. He has a clear, pure, lyrical tenor voice of great suavity — and rare accuracy — very evenly produced up and down the scale. His opening serenade, "Ecco ridente," was a joy to hear. But how un-noble he looked darting around the stage with his knees bent like Groucho Marx, jumping on tables, twirling a cape, grinning like Richard Simmons, doing broad double takes, and laughing at his own jokes.

Young baritone Keith Phares is on his way to a solid opera career, having sung good mid-level roles at the Met, the NYC Opera, and the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He returns to BLO for his first professional Figaro. As the redoubtable title character, he had at least one thing going for him: a ringing, youthful baritone voice. But he lacked the authority of the clever problem solver — and the impeccable diction necessary for his famous tongue-twisting aria, the "Largo al factotum," in which the barber, much in demand, pleads: "One at a time! One at a time!" Phares actually broke into sobs. But surely Rossini had in mind an aria of comic bravado and self-promotion, not self-pity. Phares missed the point of Rossini’s irony, and skipping and prancing around the stage, he seemed too lightweight to be a master manipulator.

Young bass Chester Patton has sung such solemn roles as the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos and the High Priest, Ramfis, in Aida, both with BLO. His voice has the perfect lower depths for Rossini’s dazzling "Slander" aria ("La calunnia") and the lanky, snaky body language for a malicious plotter. But like most of his opening-night colleagues, he had not quite assimilated his extensive battery of gestures. Everything seemed done by rote. Spontaneity was at least a few performances away.

In the orchestra, too. BLO music director Stephen Lord is very good at opera buffa style, and he had a lot of help from insinuating oboist Laura Ahlbeck. He was especially effective at conveying the "nervous" parts of the Overture (the almost sinister music Fellini uses at the spa in 8-1/2 — Rossini actually wrote this music for a tragic opera about Queen Elizabeth before recycling it for Barber), though on opening night, the repeated sections seemed merely repetitious rather than part of a larger design. Still, he kept up a good pace for the entire opera, and he was a sympathetic accompanist for the singers. Special mention, just for being a good sport, should also go to fortepianist Matthew Larson, who sat squeezed onto the edge of the stage just under the first stage-right box seat. He had his hair mussed by Figaro, and Bartolo’s servant, Berta (the delightfully overbearing and vocally endowed Janna Baty), kept shoving her substantial bosom in his face. His running keyboard commentary on the action was invariably slyer and wittier than such gags as Berta sneezing into a pair of drawers or flagellating herself.

The sets Francesco Calcagnini originally designed for Ferrara were minimal — huge movable white pieces or architecture that looked like styrofoam with some furniture to distinguish outdoors from indoors. A bizarre image for the storm music consisted of an endless shaky ladder (for the elopement) with a Figaro and a Count (not the singers themselves) dangling from overhead wires and repeatedly slipping off the ladder. During Basilio’s "Slander" aria, shadowy figures (spreading the calumny) skulked around the darkened stage. Nancy Schertler’s lighting was both gimmicky and, like the rest of the production, unilluminating.

CECILIA BARTOLI has made one part of her great career out of singing Rossini. On her terrific new compilation of greatest hits, The Art of Cecilia Bartoli (Decca, which also includes two previously unreleased duets with Pavarotti), she joins baritone Bryn Terfel in the teasing duet from Barber in which Rosina amazes Figaro by producing the very love letter he’s been trying to get her to write. She sings this with a combination of wit and tenderness that bubbles out of this sparkling music. She can’t believe her plan might really be working. This Rosina isn’t so sure everything is going to end up all right (and if we remember the sequel, Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, we know that she doesn’t exactly live happily ever after). Her self-doubt is touching. Irresistible. Lovable.

Bartoli keeps getting better and better. Last Friday at her FleetBoston Celebrity Series Symphony Hall concert, with the celebrated Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (this was not merely a recital), her voice seemed fuller, riper than ever, her bravura technical fusillades more brilliant and more commanding, and her legato singing about as sublime as the human voice spinning out a long melody can get.

Coloratura mezzos are rare enough, but Bartoli — like Callas — will go down in history for her exploration and revival of a forgotten repertoire. Her recordings of obscure arias and cantatas by Vivaldi and more recently Gluck have returned to daylight long-abandoned early-18th-century Italian music that even the Early Music mavens haven’t yet resurrected.

The program began with Vivaldi’s G-minor Sinfonia, which was played with elegant and fiery conviction by the OAE (leader Alison Bury a master seated among equals), an outfit head and shoulders above I Delfici, the disappointing Italian chamber orchestra that Bartoli brought with her two years ago. Bartoli herself then sailed out to sing three Vivaldi arias. First, the dazzling "Gelosia" (from Vivaldi’s first opera, Ottone in villa), with its rapid-fire repeated notes even more embellished in the repetition of the opening section. And third, "Anch’il mar" (from Bajazet), the first of the arias she’d sing that take the image of an emotional shipwreck to a literal level. Bartoli seemed to acknowledge the "real reason" for the aria’s existence. Even though it’s impossible to sing, for her, singing the impossible is fun, and she was obviously having a toe-tapping, hip-swinging ball with those machine-gun roulades and trills and astonishing alternations of volume.

In between came the exquisite "Se mai senti," Julius Caesar’s amorous aria from Catone in Utica — a love song that seems to be about every form of musical sighing, with notes cascading in slow motion and repeated in gorgeous, mysteriously hushed pianissimos. This was one of the emotional high points of the evening, and it was delivered with such indrawn — and indrawing — beauty that for all its conventional sentiment it was almost unbearably moving.

Vivaldi’s D-minor Concerto Grosso, with a pair of violins and a cello at the center, gave Bartoli another breathing space before she returned with Giovanni Bononcini’s "Ombra mai fu" (from Xerse), a tender aria sung to a tree; Handel borrowed it, slowed it down, and made it famous in his own Xerxes. (Bartoli got a relatively small hand for this, maybe because she didn’t sing the long opening section the program nevertheless printed words to and the audience wasn’t sure when it was going to end.) Then the breathtaking "Son quale nave" ("I am like a ship"), another "shipwreck" aria, one that Riccardo Broschi composed for his brother Carlo, who’s better known as the castrato Farinelli. In the repeat of the opening, Bartoli held the word "nave" forever, swelling and diminishing that note again and again on the same breath.

How serious Bartoli is about music was evident when she returned after intermission wearing the same gown. This was basically the Gluck part of the program, with just two arias. "Sei mai senti" (sound familiar? — it had exactly the same text as the heavenly Vivaldi aria from the first half, and the same music as the aria "O malheureuse Iphigénie" from Gluck’s later masterpiece, Iphigénie en Tauride) came from Gluck’s La clemenza de Tito (Mozart revised this same libretto for his last opera). Composed 15 years later than the Vivaldi, it had a more "modern," contoured style, and it was equally spellbinding. This was preceded by the Overture to Gluck’s Tito; then a captivating B-minor Sinfonia by C.P.E. Bach led into Berenice’s grand and powerful monologue of conflict and torment, "Berenice, che fai?" (from Antigono). Gluck adapted the impassioned ending from the gigue in Bach’s First Partita for keyboard.

Bartoli was called back for three encores. "Di questa cetra in seno" is an enchanting Gluck serenade from Il Parnaso confuso, with its lyre-like pizzicato violins and strummed cellos (it’s on The Art of . . . CD). Then another breathless Vivaldi shipwreck aria, "Sventurata navicella," from Giustino (she sang it both on her program and as an encore two years ago). And finally a repeat of the final section of the Broschi. This time the audience broke into applause right after the long-held "nave" — an interruption Bartoli accepted with pleasure. But probably not more pleasure than she herself provided.

THE COMBINATION of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (the Pastorale) and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") that Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos led in his second program with the BSO this season is not the most commonly seen programming — at least not since both works were included in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Disney’s animators didn’t exactly get either of these right. They saw in the Beethoven an Arcadian landscape populated by lady centaurs with decorous bras, and the Stravinsky as a primordial dinosaur battle. Both composers had specific visualizations — two opposite versions of pastoral, but not these.

The Beethoven, from 1808, embodies the new Romantic, Wordworthian image of nature as peaceful, life-giving countryside, and it underlined the simplicity of peasant life. The movements have titles as well as tempo markings ("Awakening of happy feelings upon reaching the countryside," the symphony begins; it ends with "Happy, grateful feelings after the storm"). The Stravinsky, from a century later (it had its riotous premiere in Paris on May 29, 1913), was a ballet choreographed by the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky depicting a sacrificial fertility ritual in pagan Russia. They make quite a satisfying pair.

My favorite recording of the Pastorale is Otto Klemperer’s unhurried, expansive Philharmonia version, with its outlandishly slow, comic Scherzo. It’s so crystalline, so limpid, you can hear everything. Every phrase has such character that conventionally quicker versions seem rushed. My favorite live performance was a 1990 BSO broadcast with Kurt Sanderling that exuded the deepest, tenderest affection for this music.

Frühbeck de Burgos’s reading had a similar old-fashioned warmth but less tenderness. Was the first movement an "awakening" or just going about at a leisurely pace? With its springy tread, the second movement, the wondrous "Scene at the brook," came off best. Fenwick Smith (flute) and John Ferillo (oboe) were among the warbling birds, though Frühbeck de Burgos’s timing was off here and those beguiling chirps weren’t quite prepared for. The rest seemed rather too familiar, even pedestrian.

The Stravinsky was another story. From Richard Svoboda’s wreathing and writhing opening bassoon chant to the violence of the final Sacrificial Dance, this was a spectacular and revelatory performance. And sexy — de Burgos certainly understands that this piece celebrates the terrifying power and mystery of fertility. Parts of it sounded as colorfully licentious as the soundtrack to Samson and Delilah (those antique hand cymbals!). But the slow through-the-mist-of-centuries introductions to each of the two parts and the ceremonious Procession of the Elders were as awe-inspiring — and as seductive (something Seiji Ozawa, who was vastly overrated for his Sacre, never got right) — as the ruthless rhythmic cataclysms were overpowering.

It was eloquently shaped, getting more and more urgent. It seemed to whiz by. There was stunning rhythmical pounding from timpanist Timothy Genis, characterful slides, blurts, and growls from the brasses (both bark and bite), superb work from Robert Sheena (English horn) and Fenwick Smith (alto flute), and the sexual thrill of Elizabeth Ostling’s insinuating little upward flute arpeggio at the very end. The orchestra seemed to know as well as the audience that something extraordinary had been achieved. On stage and in the house, everyone cheered Frühbeck de Burgos’s triumph.

"IF YOU HEAR US playing two notes together, we’re probably off." That’s how oboist Peggy Pearson introduced the first local performance — for her Winsor Music Chamber Series at Lexington’s historic Follen Church — of Elliott Carter’s year-old Oboe Quartet, one of the 93-year-old composer’s most ambitious recent works. Pearson was referring to the fiendishly difficult independent rhythms for each of the four players. But she is a master oboist, and her three colleagues were no slouches either: violist Mary Ruth Ray of the Lydian String Quartet and violinist Beyla Keyes and cellist Rhonda Rider (the latter formerly one of the Lydians) of Triple Helix.

The Oboe Quartet has one of Carter’s most striking openings: a series of aggressive string chords answered by a brief honk on the oboe, then more chords and a longer blast on the same note. When I heard the piece this past summer at Monadnock Music, those first bars suggested something like a nose-thumbing oboist giving three disagreeing and disagreeable critics the raspberry. In his illuminating pre-concert talk, composer Peter Child described the oboe as being the figure of insistence and imperviousness. He pointed out what I’d missed: that the quartet is a series of six duets — each instrument getting to play (sometimes only briefly) with a different partner while the others deliver asides. I still couldn’t locate all the duets, because the music is, as Child put it, "constantly transitional," the segments continually overlapping.

But what an exciting piece this is, despite the demands it makes on one’s attention. What breathtaking variety in the change from the "leggiero" ("lightweight, quicksilver") Moderato for oboe and viola to the Andante appassionata for oboe and cello. Pearson called the duet for oboe and violin "crazed." And smack in the middle, as in many of Carter’s works, is the still center, the eye of the storm, marked Tranquillo, the transcendent moment of stasis, calm, quietude. It can’t last, but it’s at least possible. There’s a section of eerie pizzicato night music, then more agitation before the final tentative unwinding — longer oboe notes, calmer string chords, a lightly plucked viola string. The performance was a marvel of coordination and musicality.

Preceding the Carter was another of Pearson’s convincing arrangements of a Mozart string quartet (the D-minor, K.421) for oboe and strings and then the entire Triple Helix (stellar pianist Lois Shapiro joining her stellar colleagues) in Schumann’s seldom-heard Piano Trio No. 2, in F. The latter has a vigorous, folk-like first movement, a songful and soulful slow movement marked — and here played — "Mit innigem Ausdruck" ("With inward expression"), a syncopated dancing third movement that begins like a Kurt Weill tango before becoming more gently touching, and a strong conclusion. Triple Helix’s Beethoven Trio cycle last year at Wellesley College has already become the stuff of legend. This is surely now one of the leading piano trios of our time.