Librettist/director Constantine Costi and composer Luke Di Somma took quite a gamble when they set about retelling the story of Siegfried & Roy, the ‘tiger kings of Vegas’ and the most successful magicians of all time.

Fortunately, in opera (as in magic) anything is possible, and Costi and Di Somma have come up trumps, creating a tragicomic opera that is as camp as it is moving.

At the height of their career, Siegfried & Roy were the highest-grossing act in Las Vegas, their self-titled show at the Mirage Hotel playing to packed houses for well over a decade before Roy was mauled by his white tiger, Mantacore.

Co-conceived and designed by John Napier (RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby, CATS, Starlight Express, Miss Saigon), it was described by critics as “the show of the century” and boasted a fire-breathing animatronic dragon and onstage volcano among its many extraordinary effects.

At the show’s core, however, were two magicians from Germany, whose act paired a handful of innovative illusions of Siegfried’s own making with off-the-shelf tricks you could see performed by other magicians such as Doug Henning.

What set Siegfried & Roy apart was their brand, built on a rags-to-riches backstory and a mystique cultivated around their apparently sexless...