This finely-focused and witty production of Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers with sets, costumes and lighting by the director Herbert Wernicke, is a visual and musical delight. The burlesque – conducted by Patrick Davin – is situated in a famous fin de siècle café and with a stupendous coup de théâtre the ensemble makes its entry into hell in a steam locomotive, which crashes through the ceiling. Elizabeth Vidal and Alexandru Badea in the main roles are supported energetically by the La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and Offenbach’s famous “can-can” is, as ever, an intoxicating highlight. In Offenbach’s light and elegant comedy based on the Greek legend of Orpheus – a veiled satire on Napoleon III’s régime – a dissolute bunch of gods, bored with the cushioned confines of Mount Olympus, are in a rebellious mood. They are delighted to go slumming in Hell with the duplicitous Jupiter, who agrees personally to return Eurydice (now Pluto’s lover) to her reluctant (and unfaithful) husband, hoping that, in the process, she will succumb to his charms.