Gilbert and Sullivan’s lively digs at 19th-century British society in particular, and human folly in general—thinly disguised as a fairy-tale version of Japan in the operetta The Mikado—shot headlong into the 21st century Saturday night as the opening item on the Fort Worth Opera’s 2011 Festival at Bass Performance Hall.

As a long-time opera-goer who had just about given up on anybody anywhere having anything meaningful and new to say about Gilbert and Sullivan, I’ll admit I was won over the instant the curtain rose on a swirling world of corporate and political greed, desperately trendy consumerism, and zany game-world colors and visual effects. In this version of the Victorian classic, a business-suited chorus armed with cell phones constantly dances, marches, and sings its way across a landscape in which the wandering minstrel Nanki-pu has become a heavily tattooed rock star, the maiden Yum-Yum is a tough, pink-haired bad girl, and the Mikado himself arrives on the scene, eventually, as a knife-wielding sushi chef. Watching and hearing this version of Mikado was not unlike the quasi-hypnotic experience of falling into a video game.

Thus transformed, William Gilbert’s sharp-edged satire of the human condition bit as fiercely as ever. The traditional updating, by the Lord High Executioner, of the list of people “who would not be missed” went after Donald Trump, birthers, tele-marketers, big oil, music critics, and Oprah, and, as in any good production, had the audience close to tears of laughter. Arthur Sullivan’s delightfully precarious marriage of romantic lyricism with deliberate banality worked as beautifully as ever, producing infinite earworms for this listener.

The bulk of the credit for the success of this show goes to the stage director, San Antonio native and TCU graduate John de los Santos, whose brilliant combination of literary insight and choreographic creativity has become a major force on the Texas operatic scene and is beginning to be felt on an even larger scale. De los Santos keeps his singers zipping through the high-tech dream world in a way that kept the audience delightedly grabbing for straws in this PG-rated comedy. Meanwhile, Richard Kagey’s brilliant video-game sets beautifully blurred the lines between the game world and the equally fantastic comic-opera world of the town of Titipu.

Musically, conductor Joe Illick and the Fort Worth Symphony delivered a clean, predictable reading of the score. Soprano Jessica Cates gave the most impressive vocal performance of the evening, managing to be both hilarious and vocally striking as Yum-Yum, and landing perfectly on that fine line where great comedy and great singing come together. Logan Rucker swaggered appealingly through the role of Nanki-Poo, with Joel Herold as the hapless Pish-Tush. Meaghan Deiter likewise successfully navigated the murky waters of Verdian satire as Katisha, and Matthew Young tossed off the title role winningly.

The Mikado (Matthew Young, center) gives his blessing to Nanki-Poo (Logan Rucker, center left) and Yum-Yum (Jessica Cates, center right). Photo: Ellen Appel