Move over, Bartók! Offenbach’s Barbe-bleue retells the Bluebeard legend over three farcical acts. True, there are only six wives involved here, but there’s also a complete subplot concerning an incognito princess and her father, the imbecilic King Bobèche, who’s less concerned about Bluebeard’s spousal attrition rate than with who’s bowing lowest. And anyway, he can’t do much about it because his cannons have all been melted down to make equestrian statues.

Yes, this is Offenbach at his satirical Second Empire peak, right between La belle Hélène and La vie parisienne. ‘I think he was against all forms of stupidity’, says director Laurent Pelly on the documentary that’s included on this DVD of his 2019 Opéra de Lyon staging (we get to hear from Barrie Kosky and several of the cast too), and librettists Meilhac and Halévy use a familiar (if bloody) old fairy tale to poke fun at the excesses of Napoleon III’s court. They’re equal-opportunity offenders: peasants are as stupid as courtiers, and even the heroine – the fun-loving country girl Boulotte – is a clueless naïf, at least until the point that she sees through Bluebeard’s game and turns the tables.

Offenbach, meanwhile, is on champagne form: there’s a rural dawn complete with birdsong, a storm worthy of Verdi and a delicious hand-kissing chorus. Barbe-bleue enters to sulphurous trombones and declaims in sinister melisma before breaking into a fizzy galop as he recounts the mysterious death of his previous wives. That’s the basic challenge here. This is an opera that treats the cruelty of its subject as a surreal, cartoonish absurdity – much like capital punishment in The Mikado – and too much realism runs the risk of bursting that delightfully macabre bubble.

By setting his production in a mundane, recognisable present, Pelly runs a calculated risk. It’s fun to see Barbe-bleue (Yann Beuron) enter in a black limo, and his fabulously sculpted facial hair really is blue. Beuron sings with exactly the right blend of charisma and oily menace. But his castle resembles a morgue, and the scene in which he attempts to dispatch Boulotte (Héloïse Mas) could have got very dark indeed. That it registers as comedy is down to the exuberantly physical, wide-eyed performance of Mas; an artist who manages to combine goofiness, innocence and an unmistakable sensuality, and sings as if she’s playing Carmen. The jubilant moment in which (spoiler alert) she leads the five far-from-dead wives in an all-girl rebellion against male stupidity feels wholly earned.

In fact, everyone here seems to be on Offenbach’s – and Pelly’s – wavelength: Thibault de Damas and Christophe Gay, each singing with poise and wit as an obsequious minister and Barbe-bleue’s conscience-stricken alchemist respectively; Christophe Mortagne as the swivel-eyed Bobèche; and Jennifer Courcier as shepherdess-turned-princess Fleurette – every bit as feisty as Mas in a much smaller role. The chorus, too, are spirited, whether as shambling rural halfwits or a smartly choreographed (but equally witless) crowd of courtiers.

Michele Spotti conducts, and he’s a dab hand at letting the sun shine through; this is a score that glows, as well as sparkles, though Spotti’s galops and waltz-songs are as light-footed as you could hope. This isn’t the most riotous comedy in the Offenbach canon, but in letting the music work its magic – and helping a committed cast tread a remarkably sure path between hilarity and horror – this staging is further proof that Pelly is one of the most intelligent (and entertaining) operetta directors of our time.