Seattle Opera experiments with both form and content in its new commission, Amelia, and the risks it takes are admirable. It’s a contemporary American opera (risk #1) done in two one-hour acts: practically a sprint, though thankfully, it doesn’t leave you winded. In addition, director Stephen Wadsworth’s entirely original story is both elegant in its simplicity—young Amelia grieves the loss of her pilot father during the Vietnam War—and complex in its execution: the drama spans 20 years, with multiple decades playing out on stage at one time. Plus, there’s a flashback to the Vietnam War sung in both English and Vietnamese. “[And] as far as I know, the Vietnamese language has never been set to music by an opera composer anywhere,” composer Daron Aric Hagen told the Seattle Times.

Unfortunately, the story gets bogged down in metaphors on flight: flight as freedom; as a means of escape; a way to keep from being bored; a risk worth taking. And rather than focusing on what could have been an intensely personal drama, based loosely on the life (and poems) of librettist Gardner McFall, it tries to take off with too much cargo. Why not show more in the life of Amelia, sung passionately by mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsay in her SO debut? Or allow a longer stay in Vietnam, the final scene in Act 1 and the emotional pinnacle of the opera? Tom Lynch’s set, with its jagged mountains and lush green rice paddies, is a vibrant scene for a violent episode and deserves more than a 15-minute turn on stage.

Still, it’s encouraging to see Seattle Opera take a chance, and I hope there are more new commissions in its future.

Amelia runs through May 22 at McCaw Hall.