The main problem with contextualizing Hildegard's art is the scarcity of the work itself, and our knowledge of its context and creation. Seventy-seven songs are all that survive. By the standards of the day, the words and music are eccentric to an extent that makes it almost impossible to fit within the standard liturgy. Her setting of Latin is peculiar and her melodies wander over an uncommonly wide range. Furthermore, musicologists cannot be sure what - if anything - would have accompanied the monophonic vocal lines, or whether they would have been sung by male or female voices (though historical evidence suggests that Hildegard's work was meant for a monastery, not a convent). Most troublingly, there is no evidence she composed the works that bear her name; she was the abbess of a powerful convent at Rupertsberg, and it would not have been unusual to ascribe her name to anything written by anyone residing there.

In the case of her religious drama Ordo Virtutum, the difficulty is greatest because there are also no indications how the drama would be staged, or if it ever was. The Ordo is really nothing more than a collection of Latin plainchant melodies that outline a broad allegorical drama: The Soul, torn between the call of virtue and the devil, first chooses earthly pleasures over heavenly ones. A catalogue of the seventeen virtues follows, and the drama ends with The Soul's return to virtue and triumph over the devil. In the absence of much further information, those wishing to perform Hildegard's music are left with the challenging task of balancing between musical fidelity and improvisation, and between historical accuracy and the desires of a modern audience.

The Peabody Chamber Opera opts for what I would call a "maximalist" approach. Of course maximal is a relative term - this is still, by contemporary standards, spare and austere music - but in adding dramatic staging, instrumentalists, and occasional forays into vocal polyphony, they have substantially enlarged upon the existing notes, and the results are generally satisfying. The Ordo was first recorded by the ensemble Sequentia in 1982 (also with added instrumental parts), and that production has clearly inspired what the Peabody Chamber Opera has chosen to do with the music. The accompaniment supplied by flue, recorder, harp, lute, percussion and rebec (a forerunner of the violin) is simple, either providing drones or improvising around the same pitch-sets of the singers. Most of the time, this approach enhances the dramatic and affective content of the music, though the interpolation of secular medieval dance music between a few scenes is historically dubious.

The heart of the Ordo lies entirely with the vocalists, and they acquitted themselves admirably with clear, clean singing and mostly spot-on intonation. From time to time, the ensemble augmented the monody with parallel organum, drones and similar accompaniments. Though these moments of polyphony do not exist in the music that has come down to us, the emendations are usually stylistically appropriate and are deployed with sensitivity to textual meaning.

Of particular interest is the catalogue of the seventeen virtues in second scene of the Ordo, a great opportunity for the soloists to explore the dramatic and musical possibilities of their particular "virtue." Although some of the vocal characterizations seemed a bit undemonstrative, a number of soloists gave interesting and inventive performances without straying too far from standard performance practice. Kristen Dubenion-Smith and Angela Hodgins were particularly good in this respect. Dubenion-Smith has a fluid but precise grasp of Latin diction and a keen sense of dynamic shading, and her performance had a power and authority that - paradoxically - seemed just right for her part as Humility, while Ms. Hodgins' voice had a closed, guarded quality that accorded well with the part of Dignity. The other remarkable performance of the evening came from Jennifer Meagan Bowman as The Soul. Though one might find her vocal tone too contemporary for the part, there was no quibbling with her impassioned characterization of a soul in torment.

The Peabody Chamber Opera's production took a few liberties without exceeding its brief historical accuracy and their approach was dramatically satisfying. To some extent, this probably worked as well as it did precisely because what we know of Hildegard as an artist and a person is so provisional, so open to interpretation. Ultimately, there is a tenuous connection between the popular image Hildegard the individualist and mystic - which ascribes a modernity to her that hardly existed in her time - and the few meager historical fragments we have of her life, which if anything suggest a surprising practicality and pragmatism. Performances like the Peabody's, which somehow manage to encompass both these polarities, work precisely because they recognize that such music is at once alien to us and still-universal: a pleasant paradox indeed.