WELSH National Opera (WNO) mostly hit the high notes last night as sensational soprano star Lesley Garrett led the first of its three productions at the Mayflower this week.

This was a new production of Chorus!, originally conceived by WNO in 2004, which David Pountney directed once again.

Revivals of Hansel and Gretel (Saturday) and The Magic Flute (tonight and tomorrow) continue the ‘Spell Binding’ season in Southampton.

Chorus! takes a witty, tongue-in-cheek, sometimes spectacular and sometimes bemusing journey through the rich repertoire of choral music.

It’s a greatest hits production designed to celebrate the chorus but also make opera palatable for the uninitiated.

It is like a pick and mix selection – some of the bite size chunks delight whilst others could stick irritatingly to your teeth – it’s all a matter of taste!

It’s naughty but nice yet could ruffle a few feathers of the opera purists.

Designer Johan Engels, who sadly passed away last December, together with Pountney, has certainly created a visual delight with a surrealist spectacle of monochrome sets and costumes exclusively in keeping with a red and black theme, evocative of passion, revolution, life and death.

Actor/dancer Christopher Tudor appears like the scarlet pimpernel to provide a semblance of narrative between the interwoven pieces, although I mostly failed to read the links Visually it is magical – not least when Lesley Garrett, clearly game for a laugh, makes a dramatic entrance suspended in the air in a pair of giant red lips!

She is a versatile performer, one minute playing a nun, the next a diva, who lends her delectable honey sweet soprano to arias and songs throughout.

An Elvis look-a-like even pops up in a raunchy segment from Stravinsky’s Rake Progress from where the action takes us to a very well received The Pirates of Penzance via Weill, Shostakovich and Bizet. Conductor and chorus master Alexander Martin characterises each well.

All the opera classics are there to delight – the Humming Chorus from Puccini’s Madam Butterfly and Va Pensierro from Verdi’s Nabucco and, of course, two pieces from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance – A Policeman's Lot and With Cat-like Tread.

The chorus may be the backbone of opera but Lesley Garrett, who is looking forward to her 60th birthday next month, still shone as the star, defiantly holding back the years – particularly in The Impossible Dream and powerful finale Make our Garden Grow from Bernstein’s Candide.