This DVD opens with Peter Schickele introducing – in his characteristically deadpan manner – his special creation/ discovery (?) of PDQ Bach, ‘the last and least of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 21 children, a pimple on the face of music’ with unlikely dates (1807-1742). It is PDQ’s ‘masterpiece’, The Abduction of Figaro, we are to see and hear. Schickele then conducts a first-class live performance by members of the Minnesota Opera, with the singers enjoying themselves hugely.

After the clever patchwork of the Overture (which is not without its Hoffnung reminders), the three-act opera opens with a scene purloined from Gianni Schicchi, and the rest is outrageous pastiche, drawing primarily on Mozart’s five key operas with a dash of The Pirates of Penzance.

Schickele has a thorough understanding of Mozartean ensemble and vocal part-writing, and this counters the various extravagances and vulgarities of the drama and text. Much of the music is memorable. The closing Quartet from scene 1, ‘Love is gone’, Peccadillo’s engaging aria ‘Behold Fair Maiden’ in scene 2, the fizzing scene 3 Sextet, ‘What a downer’, are remarkable examples. The famous Trio from Così fan tutte is the inspiration for a delightful but unpredictable finale to Act 1. The charming duet, shared by Pecadillo and Donald Giovanni as they survive their shipwreck, ‘God be praised’, which opens Act 2, is no less attractive.

By now all the principal characters have arrived on Pasha Shaboom’s island, and Opec, the genial male alto equivalent of Osmin, delivers an opening aria which takes us straight into Mozart’s Seraglio, echoed even more recognisably by the following chorus.

Act 3, set in ‘A Magic Forest’, opens with a mock ballet sequence, the more telling because, in spite of the hilarious mishaps, it is so gracefully danced by the Minnesota Corpse de Ballet. Enter Papa Geno and Mama Geno, with their country-and-western duet, which all but stops the show. But in the end it is Schlepporello who does that, by stealing the pirate treasure and demanding, and at last is given his chance, to sing an aria, ‘Why, oh why?’, before the grand finale. When the curtain falls, we hear what happened to all the characters after the story ended, including the surviving Figaro, who ‘ended up in Paris where he founded a newspaper’.

It is all nonsense but very enjoyable nonsense, especially second time round, after one has swallowed the verbal extravagances and entered into the spirit of Peter Schickele’s good-natured parody. The weaker humour of the bonus excerpts from the Gross Concerto for Diverse Flutes would come off better at a live concert.