Before their acclaimed La belle Hélène (3/02), runner-up for Gramophone’s DVD Award last year, Laurent Pelly and Marc Minkowski staged Offenbach’s first great success for Lyon Opera, in the same pleasantly outrageous manner.

Minkowski’s conducting again recalls Leibowitz’s classic recordings – bone-dry, sprightly and slightly manic. Andrew Lamb, reviewing the related (but differently cast) CD recording (EMI 1/99), queried the extra 1874 numbers Minkowski grafts onto the 1858 original; but, as AML guessed, the combination works extremely well on stage. Other CD quirks, in particular taking Eurydice’s sensuous ‘Bacchus Hymn’ destructively fast, are explained if not excused by Pelly’s production – as manic and as refreshing, in his clever use of dancers, surreal sight gags, and cheerfully unfettered sex (a remarkable ‘Fly Duet’!). His ‘backstage’ settings make less sense than Hélène’s, but the Cloud-Cushion-Land Olympus is inspired.

Their hard-worked cast respond superbly, notably Natalie Dessay’s modern Parisienne Eurydice, dressy, leggy, and neurotic, delivering zinging coloratura while bouncing on a sofa or perched high on a stage lift. Laurent Naouri’s youthful Jupiter is equally athletic, vocally, and physically swashbuckling. Diminutive Jean-Paul Fouchécourt sings suavely but makes Pluto more comic than seductive, looking like a malevolent hobbit in his pointed ears; lyrical honours go to Yann Beuron’s smugly charming Orpheus. Among rather ordinary gods, Cassandre Berthon’s sweet-voiced shrimp of a Cupid stands out, as do the wonderfully moth-eaten John Styx and tweedy, hand-bagging Public Opinion.

Minkowski occasionally forces the pace and Pelly’s high camp sometimes tips over into shrill vulgarity. The remastered surround-sound is rather stagey, occasionally losing voices in unfriendly perspectives. It’s still treasurable, and vastly superior to its only DVD rival, a dismal Brussels staging. Avoid that; buy this; rejoice