Under the baton of musical director Baker Peeples, the 22-piece orchestra produces a big sound, and an assured and steady performance. Right from the Overture, you just know that all will be well. Peeples, at home with both opera and G&S, has balances and dynamics exactly right, allowing the devilishly clever, anachronistically Sondheimesque lyrics to come through, even when the chorus of Bucks and Blades (greeted with "Welcome, gentry / For your entry") rhapsodizes:

When thoroughly tired
Of being admired,
By ladies of gentle degree,
With flattery sated,
High-flown and inflated...
Away from the city we flee
From charms intramural
To prettiness rural.

Fine all-around diction, generous supertitles, a supportive orchestra, and Jane Erwin Hammett's balletic-hilarious stage direction combine to support clear communication — the indispensable minimum requirement for G&S. Although it's generally frowned upon, you can slur words in Italian or German opera; G&S turns into mush if you do that. Imagine if you miss just one word from the Basic Curse setting up the plot:

Each lord of Ruddygore,
Despite his best endeavour,
Shall do one crime, or more,
Once, every day, for ever!
This doom he can't defy,
However he may try,
For should he stay
His hand, that day
In torture he shall die!

In Rederring, life — and a permanent corps of would-be bridesmaids — revolves around one Rose Maybud (I am not making this up, you know), the object of all the men's attention. So until she makes up her mind, no other wedding is possible. Karen Tesitor, as Rose, makes a good case for the believability of such a lopsided romantic stalemate. Why bother with anybody but this tiny, enchanting songbird? One also understands how even a fine lad like Robin Oakapple would be awkward and tongue-tied in his seemingly hopeless pursuit of Rose. Not quite as clear is how F. Lawrence Ewing's Robin can be so perfectly hilarious, without cheap tricks or overacting.

Musically and dramatically, Tesitor and Ewing could just waltz off to a happy ending, but hark! We are still at the beginning of Act I. Robin, you see, is a Murgatroyd in disguise, having faked his death in order to escape the Curse. Here comes the necessary tenor, John Brown, as the dissolute sailor Richard Dauntless, singing and dancing his rough personage into the hearts of the audience and — up to a point — of Rose.

Asked to speak to Rose on behalf of his good and shy friend, Richard promptly reveals Robin's accursed secret to Rose, all the better to gain her hand. Enter the baritone, Charles Martin (who had sung Angelotti for Pocket Opera, but who sounds more like Scarpia here), as the wicked Murgatroyd, stuck with the Curse after his brother's demise.

You need to meet one more cast member before working up to one of the play's many high points. Kathleen Moss, a mezzo with several interchangeable voices in her throat, is Mad Margaret, abandoned by the bad Murgatroyd (who is about to go good, turning administration of the Curse over to Robin) and given a strangely wonderful aria by Sullivan.

All characters accounted for, here comes one of the funniest scenes in all G&S: The bridesmaids dance prenuptually around Rose and Robin — "Hail the bridegroom, hail the bride!" — but Robin is out of the running, now that he must become the cursed baronet again. Rose turns to the newly reformed baronet; but he declares for Margaret, whose madness he had caused during his bad days. And so Rose turns to Richard with an echt-romantic proposal: "Thou art the only one that's left / So I am thine!"

There is much, so much more, in Ruddygore, on the way to unraveling complications and ameliorating, nay, shifting the weight of the Curse. Ultimately, Robin rejoices:

Having been a wicked baronet a week
Once again a modest livelihood I seek.
Agricultural employment
Is to me a keen enjoyment,
For I'm naturally diffident and meek!