The show itself is a gem, a compact operetta with a radiant score, and virtually every aspect of this production is right on target, starting with Laura Osnes, the star, who looks like she stepped out of a storybook and sings like she stepped out of a dream.

WSJ: 'Cinderella': No Talking, Please

And in trying to refocus the operetta into a modern context, perhaps the purpose of the exercise becomes unclear.

BBC: Opera's orgy of pleasure

It covers an enormous range of experience, too, yet the style is consistently playful, even frivolous, and slyly erotic at times, we might be watching a naked operetta.

NEWYORKER: I Served the King of England

Gene Wisoff says the Mendelssohn Glee Club of that era reminds him of something out of a 19th-century operetta.

NPR: Storied Glee Club Faces Waning Membership

Only this year a new publication has been started, dealing exclusively with French operetta.

ECONOMIST: The London Proms

And McPartland joins in for a duet in "Softly As in a Morning Sunrise, " originally composed as a tango by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein for the 1928 operetta The New Moon.

NPR: Hiromi On Piano Jazz