The Nightingale is musical and visual storytelling at its finest in COC revival

Canadian Opera Company. Directed by Robert Lepage. Johannes Debus, conductor. Until May 19 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W. coc.ca or 416-363-8231

Although The Nightingale and Other Short Fables has all of the ingredients of opera — and then some — it might be best to think of it as a week’s worth of bedtime stories rolled into one evening.

The opening performance of the Canadian Opera Company’s revival of Robert Lepage’s 2009 brainchild on Friday night showed that this theatrical showcase has aged well. It was as charming as nearly a decade ago. The forces at work on the stage were strong and the music was compelling.

But aside from The Nightingale (Le Rossignol), which stands alone as a cohesive 45-minute opera, this production is about showcasing the mechanics of how theatre and entertainment happen rather than presenting a unified story. The glue that holds everything together is Lepage’s vision and the music of Igor Stravinsky, all of it written between 1911 and 1919.

In a winking jab to the ribs of operatic convention, the audience arrives in the theatre to find a pool of water in the orchestra pit and the orchestra onstage. Clearly this isn’t going to be a regular night at the opera.

The journey to eventual theatrical splendour begins modestly, with a reduced-size orchestra, clarinet solos, vocal solos and choral songs for women extolling the simple pleasures of cats and Russian rural life. The visuals come from shadow puppets and acrobatics provided by six talented individuals whose credits are buried in the program.

These first 45 minutes are a patchwork of nine short pieces with no dramatic arc. The body of still, glistening water between the audience and the stage serves as a dark, silent reminder that we are waiting for something to happen.

The singers, most with an association with the COC, are young and capable, although the women of the COC Chorus, sounding stronger than in 2009, still didn’t capture the steel-edged sound that would better suit this music.

The orchestra led by COC music director Johannes Debus was crisp and beautifully balanced. Stravinsky’s orchestrations are masterful and Debus helped tease out their many colours.

The Nightingale flies out after a 30-minute intermission, animating the pond, the puppeteers and the glory that is Canadian soprano Jane Archibald in the title role. The whole evening is worth these 45 minutes of musical and visual richness, which tell the tale of how the bird’s song enchants a Chinese emperor and, later, when he is near death, restores him to life.

This is storytelling at its finest, using every element available to the creative team to make us forget the many individual means and techniques that make theatre possible. We are carried on the wings of music and story to a place of once-upon-a-time enchantment.

You may even remember the magic of a favourite bedtime story on your way home.