SANTA FE, N.M. – Rich it sometimes is, strange often: Thomas Adès' operatic version of Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest. Premiered two years ago at London's Covent Garden, it's getting its first American performances this summer at Santa Fe Opera. Wednesday's was the second of four.

Mr. Adès, all of 34, already is a celebrity on the British new-music scene, a skilled pianist and conductor as well as composer. His new opera's libretto, by Meredith Oakes, nips, tucks and paraphrases Shakespeare into Bard Lite, with rhyming couplets. This gives the opera more immediacy and distracts us less with Shakespeare's verbal virtuosity. But couldn't we at least have "Full fathom five" untouched?

Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, scholar and magician, is stuck on an island. His companions are his young daughter Miranda, the sprite Ariel and the monster Caliban.

Prospero has been run off by his brother Antonio, who's seized power in a liaison with Alonso, king of Naples. To celebrate, Antonio packs his royal friends onto a ship for a pleasure cruise, but a storm whipped up by Prospero wrecks the ship and maroons the cruisers on the same island. Feared lost, Ferdinand, Alonso's son, washes up separately; to Prospero's horror, he and Miranda fall in love.

At Prospero's prompting, Ariel sows discord among the castaways, and murders are plotted. Eventually, Prospero figures his enemies have suffered enough, and he magically restores their clothes and ship. They're allowed to return home, and Miranda and Ferdinand are to marry. And Prospero will return to power in Milan.

Mr. Adès' score favors a kind of pan-modernism. It's most appealing when it sounds most like Britten, in his otherworldly Midsummer Night's Dream mode. Prospero magically evokes innocence when he sings to Miranda, "Where you live is kind." Over an accompanying chaconne, variations on a three-beats-per-measure theme, Miranda and Ferdinand sing a hauntingly beautiful love duet.

Elsewhere, disequilibrium is evoked in restless tremolos (something of a cliché after a while) and dissonant clusters. The vocal writing is mostly fairly conjunct, but with lots of awkward chromaticism and rhythms. The latter make for dicey coordination with the orchestra, which itself sometimes sounds a little fuzzy despite music director Alan Gilbert's clear beat.

Designer Paul Brown supplies a wind-blown island with a denuded tree. The shipwrecked nobles are in modern suits, military uniforms and party dresses. Duane Schuler works wonders with lighting. Director Jonathan Kent and his cast bring the dramatis personae to life.

Rod Gilfry, looking like a ragged Robinson Crusoe, copes capably with Prospero's often high-lying part, but his thick baritone peters out on low notes. Mr. Adès makes Ariel a stratospheric Tweety Bird, with lots of high E's. Vocal music is half about words, right? But at these pitches not even the astonishing Cyndia Sieden, as a kind of masked blue bird, can utter anything but incomprehensible peeps.

In normal soprano range, Patricia Risley's Miranda supplies warm, rich tone but often malformed vowels. Attired with more grime than anything else, William Ferguson's feral Caliban is, shall we say, conspicuously male. His lean tenor spreads on top, but tonal beauty isn't a prime consideration here.

Toby Spence is a noble Ferdinand, singing elegantly except when he gets too loud and edgy in the last-act quintet. Other standouts include Gwynne Howell's Gonzalo, Chris Merritt's Alonso, David Hansen's (countertenor) Trinculo and Keith Phares' Sebastian.

E-mail scantrell@dallasnews.com

Santa Fe Opera repeats The Tempest at 8:30 p.m. Aug. 11 and 17. $27 to $160. 1-800-280-4654, www.santafe opera.org.