Not a story about elves talking to people, but people talking to people, gathered in close.

So, what is it, then, that brought back The Pearl Fishers from sea and into our opera houses again?

It’s very comforting for the uninitiated to walk into their first musical and hear familiar songs; to watch relatable characters wearing hockey jerseys, resembling real people, speaking casually as real people do every day - combined with a few razzle dazzle dance numbers and stunning set, lighting design and fun aerial stunts.

Mitisek and his creative team seem to channel the askew agitation of German expressionism to bring out the horror of the red tape prison.

Dense as the plot may be, it is a testament to Wagner’s genius not only as a composer but also as a librettist, that at no point in Walküre’s four hour and forty-five minute runtime does the piece seem to lag. It is long because it must be.

Even so, Orphée et Eurydice is still an evening heady with love, loss and promise. Promise not only of creating life, life, life out of despair, but of how this marriage of two institutions may make a happy whole.

In short, the play achieves something remarkably rare for a jazz-inflected musical: the performers sound like jazz singers, not musical theatre singers trying to be jazz singers.

Note that this cast is truly so good that a different audience member on a different night might well come up with a completely different list of compliments with no crossover in actors mentioned and be absolutely correct in the assessment.

Dance is the centerpiece here, and the whole production is built to show it off, which it does with aplomb.

To sing a bulk of Little Fish: the Herculanean Nicole Laurenzi, a New York transplant who puts a flicker of life in this cipher’s eye and propels her Charlotte to the very last lap. She is a most welcome addition to Chicagoland, for sure.