This year’s Boston Symphony Orchestra gala marked the beginning of Seiji Ozawa’s 29th and last season as BSO music director, a post he’s held longer than any of his distinguished predecessors. To his credit, he felt he had to respond to the recent catastrophic events. To the announced program — Mendelssohn’s Overture and enchanting Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream — he added a note of solemnity, telling the audience, " This is a very difficult time for all of us. . . . I’m very glad that we can be together in this way. "

Fireman Elijah Magee, from Ladder House 15 near Symphony Hall, marched down the aisle in full regalia, carrying the Stars and Stripes, a spotlight following him. Everyone rose; many wept. Ozawa then led the evening’s soloists (Metropolitan Opera stars Dawn Upshaw and Susan Graham), actress Blythe Danner, the women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (one of whom lost her husband on Flight 11), and, turning to the audience, us too in " America the Beautiful " (skies once used to be " spacious " ). Danner read the late British poet Stephen Spender’s " The Truly Great. " The orchestra played Bach’s Air on the G String ( " our prayer, " Ozawa called it), the same piece he led last April in memory of the late Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli. A moment of silence — and then the four chords of the Overture announcing the magic to come.

Some people feel that this event was beyond criticizing, that it was a communal gathering, a memorial, a ceremony. But it seems to me wrong to ignore our critical standards. This was not a religious service but an expensive concert — many people paid three-digit prices. The musicmaking ought to have been on the highest level. In fact, I wish it had been less of a media event. If music is supposed to console or evoke catharsis or encourage spiritual contemplation, why were professional photographers allowed to click noisily away, even during the most introspective moments?

But this will not be a concert posterity will want to rehear. As on his 1994 recording, Ozawa remains uncomprehending of Mendelssohn’s subtle Shakespearean characterizations: the octave leaps and drops that imitate Bottom’s heehawing when he’s turned into an ass; the four opening — and closing — chords that cast their spell. They’re not just notes. Where was the romance of the Nocturne? The famous Wedding March is meant to be celebratory, joyful, not just pompous (in a Globe interview, Ozawa indicated that he was nervous about playing anything too cheery). As on his recording, he still doesn’t get Mendelssohn’s countless delicious transitions.

The orchestra played well if not perfectly — sweet winds (especially the BSO’s welcome new oboist, John Ferillo), buoyant timpani (Everett Firth), fervent brasses (bass-trombonist Douglas Yeo played not the modern tenor tuba but an 1855 French ophicleide, the now antique instrument Mendelssohn composed for). The strings were elegant, but the thick textures Ozawa favors washed out much piquancy of detail. Upshaw, evidently suffering from a bad cold, was in thin voice and hard to hear, though she inflected the words with considerable charm. Graham was vocally richer in her minuscule part. The chorus was radiant. But the performance rarely came to life.

Worst was Danner, reading lines from the play that connected the musical passages. The narrator on Ozawa’s recording is Judi Dench, who conveys the difference between Titania and Oberon, Puck and Bottom, by providing a different voice and pace for each character. Danner, who stumbled over some tricky articulation, gave essentially the same " I-am-an-actress " reading throughout. She got one laugh — on Bottom’s heavy-handed alliterations. The Spender poem came off even worse. I wish the powers had chosen one by an American poet; still, " The Truly Great " has chilling resonances with the current tragedy ( " those who in their lives fought for life,/Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre " ). But like Ozawa, Danner was focusing more on sound than on meaning. Spender’s verse is a little murky to begin with; Danner failed to help us follow it, though her actressy British-isms left no doubt she was reading " Poetry. "

Maybe the few moments of real grief and exaltation were enough.

FOR NEARLY FOUR HOURS, the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Verdi’s Don Carlos (at the Shubert through October 16) avoided the kind of lame " ideas " that have sunk so many of its stagings. BLO general director Janice Mancini Del Sesto’s welcoming remarks about the importance of finding beauty in the world also made explicit the " uncanny relevance " to current events of Verdi’s story — the conflict between church and state, fanaticism and freedom. But it was appalling to see, in the last scene, a square stump of a building with a gaping rift revealing an incinerated interior. It must have been designed before September 11 — but I wish someone had thought to change it.

Otherwise the production was inoffensive and a little bland. John Conklin’s sets were mostly spare, minimally abstract (Elisabeth de Valois standing in front of a huge empty picture frame), but also Baroque (radically foreshortened columns, steeply angled wall) and Mannerist (Don Carlos is held in custody not in the usual Piranesi prison but in a pit into which have been dumped gigantic crosses). Huge El Grecos were projected throughout. Martha Mann’s costumes were mostly black and white, with a red gown for jealous Princess Eboli (I missed her familiar eyepatch), leather pants for King Philippe, and long coats and bulky, unflattering muu-muus that looked more like costumes than royal clothing.

Verdi’s grandest opera, with six major roles, is a casting challenge. The BLO came up with a group of singers who were never less than adequate — though seldom more. Mark S. Doss’s firm bass baritone wasn’t quite imposing enough for Philippe. Bass Chester Patton looked and sounded too young for the Grand Inquisitor. Last month, Boston Bel Canto’s concert performance brought us a thrilling confrontation between king and inquisitor (Craig Hart and his teacher, the legendary Jerome Hines); this one just felt long-winded. Mezzo-soprano Robynne Redmon had to work beyond comfort level as Eboli, though she provided a dramatic urgency lacking elsewhere. Carlos was French tenor Jean-Pierre Fourlan, the Radames in the BLO’s Aida two years ago; if he could sing softly as well as he can belt, the BLO probably couldn’t afford him. As Posa, Carlos’s friend and the king’s confidant, who wants to liberate the Flemish, French-Canadian baritone Gaetan Laperrière had the most stylish vocalism and authoritative presence.

The great hope for this production was soprano Indra Thomas as Elisabeth, her first major Verdi role. Two seasons ago, she made a strong impression stepping in at the last minute for the Boston Philharmonic’s Mahler Eighth Symphony. Her beautifully rounded full voice and sympathetic personality are perfect for Verdi heroines. She can sing loud and soft, high and (for the most part) low. She didn’t pace herself, so her energy seemed depleted before her great aria in the last act, which had the only note she cracked on. She’ll learn. Her emotional instincts are good too — she reacts to everything around her. But she also needs to learn how to create a character, how to move, how to walk (queens don’t galumph). Director Leon Major didn’t help her enough.

Major’s staging was mostly stock operatic convention. Characters lined up in diagonals — sometimes looking away when they should have been looking at one another, sometimes vice versa. He added a klutzy battle between giant Satan and Christ puppets during the auto-da-fé. But the major disappointment was the conducting. Stephen Lord was less a leader than an accompanist. Verdi’s music, especially in the grand sweep of his operatic epics, needs to chafe at the bit like a champion racehorse, headlong and precipitous, requiring restraint and guidance. But as in the auto-da-fé scene, in which the burning of Flemish heretics was conveyed by some red lighting, Lord’s rhythmic chugging lacked real fire.

BLO used Verdi’s five-act French original (as opposed to the revised four-act Italian version), which hasn’t been heard in Boston since Sarah Caldwell presented its American premiere, at the Orpheum, in 1973. Verdi kept rethinking this opera, and perhaps its most powerful incarnation is the later Italian version plus the original opening scene at Fontainebleau, in which Carlos and Elisabeth fall instantly in love. I wish Lord hadn’t cut the sublime lament after the assassination of Posa, music Verdi recycled as the Lacrymosa in his Requiem. A more exciting production — one with more singers who have more than passable French — might have made a better case for Verdi’s original conception.

NOTHING CONVENTIONAL or merely ceremonial in Fenwick Smith’s 25th annual flute recital. Just elegant performances of excellent, widely varied, largely neglected 20th-century music by Albert Roussel, Joseph Marx, and Charles Griffes; the world premiere of John Heiss’s delightful eight-part Whimsies (his note for VII: " Stuck: waltzes are everywhere, but so are cuckoos " ); and a couple of masterpieces by Rameau and Bach. Smith’s collaborators included the superb pianist Sally Pinkas, harpsichordist John Gibbons, cellist Laura Blustein, and ethereal soprano Jayne West in the most profound piece of music I’ve heard since the bombing, Bach’s cantata aria with his greatest flute obbligato, " Es ist genug " ( " It is enough " ).