An odd couple: Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Carmina Burana’ and ‘Credo’ by Margaret Bonds

The struggle for the right to vote. Seeing the worst in others and working to prove it. A devil on a mission to “narrow the opportunity of struggling human beings.”

These aren’t last week’s headlines, but 120-year-old sentiments set to music flowing from the Academy of Music stage Friday night. Opera Philadelphia, best known for its annual fall festival of edgy staged works, shifted modes for its winter offering. Choruses, orchestra, and vocal soloists presented the odd pairing of Orff’s Carmina Burana, famous for its screaming sound, and Margaret Bonds’ Credo, quiet by comparison and hardly known at all.

Musically and otherwise, the two works had nothing to say to each other. But the double bill did allow Opera Philadelphia the efficiencies of mostly overlapping forces needed for both.

The opera troupe has woven social justice into its practice in recent years, and the fact of Credo’s age emphasized an uncomfortable truth. Bonds wrote her plea for basic human rights and dignity in 1965, and she based it on text by W.E.B. Du Bois published in 1904 — decades of struggle.

The work speaks of pride, service, peace, liberty, and harmony among all races, and when the section expressing a belief in patience arrives, you’re hit with a sudden wave of frustration and futility. Patience? You almost want to answer with Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning about the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

Bonds’ work doesn’t wow with deep or innovative musical ideas. But it does skillfully and often beautifully underline the emotions behind Du Bois’ words. When the text speaks of believing in service, the music grows sweet. Conciliatory strings introduce the “Prince of Peace” section. A harp signifies dreaming, and blue-sky, open music intensifies a message about the natural consonance between liberty and being human.

You had to wonder whether the work was as well-served by the production as it could have been. Opera Philadelphia was using a new concert shell made of 13 spaced panels above and around the musicians that didn’t fully solve the problem of getting the sound of the chorus and orchestra out into the hall. The Academy stage is deep, and, as the Philadelphia Orchestra discovered decades ago, the sound tends to stay there.

The slight lack of impact was even more obvious in the Orff. And here it’s best to out myself as one of the very few listeners in the universe unable to connect with Carmina Burana. The repetition hits me like a series of cliches, and I find the general lack of warmth in the music off-putting. The orchestra and chorus were fine, though not exceptionally polished, and the vocal soloists did little to convince me of the material. Tenor Alasdair Kent was almost there in his high, eerie solo, with baritone Ethan Vincent sturdier in some parts than others. Brandie Sutton proved a soprano of generous power and emotional range, and members of the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Chorale provided an admirable element of plush.

What this program did have was Lina González-Granados, whom Philadelphians may remember from her recent stint on the conducting staff of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has clear technique and a way with phrase-shaping that tells a compelling story — qualities that make a good case for her return in other repertoire. An opera would do nicely.

Additional performance: Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Streets. operaphila.org, 215-732-8400.