"There's no hip-hop, no soul singer trying to sing Mozart," Mitch Sebastian says from London of "The Opera Show," his vivid production that arrives in Baltimore this week. "You will hear your Verdi, Bizet, Mozart and some achingly sweet Handel. The music is not messed with."

It is, however, gussied up - choreographed, stylized, digitalized and dramatized into what a reviewer for the U.K.'s Independent described earlier this season as a "quirky operatic cabaret triptych." (The reviewer was won over by the experience.)

There's nothing quite like "The Opera Show," which debuted in the summer of 2008, a novelty factor that folks at the Lyric Opera House are counting on to generate traffic for this stop on the extravaganza's U.S. debut tour.

"We're hoping to attract a nontraditional audience, one that is more used to MTV presentations," says Jim Harp, the Lyric's director of opera and educational activities. "It's a high-energy show that I think will appeal to them. And, hopefully, they will become interested enough to check out more opera afterward. The best thing that we could see would be grandparents bringing their grandchildren to see this."

Unlike the New York-based East Village Opera Company, which translates classical vocal works into pop/rock idioms, "The Opera Show" applies pop concert trappings - amplification, occasional rock beats, video projections and assorted special effects - to classical vocal works that are essentially performed straight.

"The words 'opera' and 'show' don't belong together," Sebastian says, "but when they crash together, I think people are intrigued. It's a dangerous title. It's provocative on purpose. People who think we've 'dumbed down' opera are shocked by the standard and the style and the wit. And the reverence, I guess. I love this music. And I have so much respect for opera singers."

The production uses the talents of five classically trained singers, along with a group of seasoned dancers and instrumentalists. "I started as a dancer," Sebastian, 43, says. "I got involved in choreographing and then became a theater director. My world is visual."

An encounter with disappointing visuals a few years ago helped trigger Sebastian's concept for "The Opera Show." It was at an arena performance by a couple of big opera stars.

"As beautiful as that concert was, it was extremely dull to watch, and the monotony was just killing me," he says. "Just one singer walking onstage, singing an aria and walking back off, then the other singer entered. When you see a concert by Madonna or Kylie Minogue or the Spice Girls, the music is banal, but they have real stage direction and all these fabulous clothes. I thought, why not bring those [elements] together with opera?"

Sebastian wasn't merely interested in parading lavish costumes, although the ones by Christopher Giles reveal a Bob Mackie-worthy extravagance. The directorwanted to introduce a sense of narrative as well. "I started with a structure," Sebastian says. "The idea of three acts appealed to me, because that's such a classical form."

Although there's no dialogue and no conventional plot, there is a distinct scenario and look to each of the three portions of "The Opera Show," which Sebastian refers to as a "dreamscape."

"It's three different shows, really - three for the price of one," he says.

The first section takes place in an Italian palace where bewigged singers in great outfits carry on, and where famous arias from 17th- and 18th-century operas and a 19th-century Neapolitan song rub anachronistic shoulders.

Part 2 presents a 1940s setting that reveals a working-class family exploring the sound of opera on a phonograph, and the opera singers who are making the records.

"This act is a ballet, really, with opera music as the soundtrack," Sebastian says. "The third act is more of a straightforward concert format, with some vaudeville and musical hall."

Not to mention some rock; this segment is spiced with rhythmic pulsation and bits of fantasy and science fiction. Unexpected juxtapositions are the norm, including an aria from Mozart's "The Magic Flute" with electric guitar accompaniment, and, in an outside-opera sidebar, a face-off between a violinist and a tap dancer to the strains of a Bach fugue.

"What we're hoping to accomplish is to excite people enough that they will fall in love with the music," Sebastian says. "Even if someone thinks, 'That's not my kind of music,' giving them this showy entertainment might open up their ears. They may want to download a piece of Mozart afterward, and maybe that will take them to their local opera house."

Whether any nonconventional operatic entertainment, from the famed Three Tenors concerts to something as offbeat as "The Opera Show," will turn the uninitiated into full-fledged opera-goers is an open question. But Sebastian clearly wants to try.

"I'm interested in people responding to the music. The reason why it has sustained itself for centuries is because it transcends fashion," he says. "And whether you're educated [in opera] or not, you can immediately feel the music. It's a very primal, instinctive thing."

If you go "The Opera Show" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave. Tickets are $17 to $47. Call 410-547-7328 or go to ticketmaster.com.