Toronto Operetta Theatre has assembled an absolutely top-notch cast for its current revival of The Mikado. Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas have always been prized for their cleverness and wit, but what’s most striking about this production is the sheer beauty of the music making.

As Nanki-Poo, the disguised heir to the throne of Japan, golden-voiced Peter McCutcheon gives a gorgeous account of his entrance song “A Wand’ring Minstrel,” complete with effortless, ringing high notes. As his beloved Yum-Yum, Michèle Bogdanowicz is bright and perky but sings “The sun whose rays” in Act 2 as a full-fledged opera aria with the result that it gains in depth and power. The same is true for two roles often thrown away on people who are more character actors than singers. Wendy Hatala Foley uses her lovely full mezzo to make Katisha, the woman also in love with Nanki-Poo, not the usual witch but a woman fearing a life without love, a feeling she strongly conveys in Katisha’s two solo meditations that clearly impressed the entire audience. David Ludwig is simply the best Pooh-Bah I’ve seen, a hilarious combination of haughty officiousness and easy bribability. His characterization is so strong that for once the real object of Gilbert’s satire, mindless legalism, shone through the operetta’s outward trappings of Japanalia. The same is true of Sean Watson, whose enormous deep voice made for a very impressive Mikado, whose supposedly “humane” goal is to make the “punishment fit the crime.” As the dimwitted Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko, Gerald Isaac is very funny though his voice came and went. Updating his little list of society’s offenders “who never would be missed” are Conrad Black, Brian Mulroney and reality TV producers.

Guillermo Silva-Marin has cultivated a minimalist style of design and a precise, non-intrusive style of direction ideal for the Jane Mallett Theatre since it makes the singers and the music the single most important element of the production. Under conductor David Speers the nine-piece band sound like a salon orchestra of the highest order. The cast may not have found all there is in Gilbert’s witty dialogue, but, what is rarer, they consistently bring out the real splendour in Sullivan’s music.