Opera suffers from a reputation for being dull, serious and far too long. Wendy Taucher, the New York and West Tisbury-based choreographer and director, has found a cure.

So-Young Park captured hearts in role of Marie. — Jeanna Shepard

Ms. Taucher’s yearly Opera at Featherstone productions strip away the ponderous trappings of traditional opera to reveal the pure beauty of the music, sung by highly trained vocalists from the Metropolitan Opera and other stages.

She also dials up the comedy in operas like Donizetti’s La fille du régiment which opened Friday for three nights at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs.

La fille du régiment runs a lean 70 minutes, with no intermission and almost nonstop laughs.

Jettisoning the recitatives and non-singing dialogue that generally weigh down and lengthen opera proceedings, Taucher annually writes a snappy English-language narration for actor Donovan Dietz, who appears briefly between scenes to explain the action.

In La fille, this messenger is literally a medium: Mr. Dietz plays Madame Fortune, a spiritualist in turban and shawls with an enormous bosom and a brisk way with the plot: “They’ve captured him! They’re marching him off to who knows where. He’s escaped! You can’t keep a good man down.”

The good man is Tonio, the tenor in Donizetti’s comedy who, naturally, longs for soprano Marie. Tonio’s role is considered one of the most demanding tenor parts in opera: in one aria alone, Ah! Mes amis, quel jour de fête, he sings nine high Cs.

Luke Grooms, a Tennessee native who’s equally comfortable in opera and musical theatre roles, easily cleared every hurdle Friday with a voice that resounded throughout its range.

His bashful but determined Tonio wins the love of Marie, played with vocal precision and tomboyish charm by So-Young Park, who will sing the Queen of the Night in the next Met production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

La fille du regiment runs a lean 70 minutes with nonstop laughs. — Jeanna Shepard

Ms. Park captured the Friday audience’s hearts with both her voice and her high-wattage smile as she capered across the stage, a carefree young orphan raised by a company of soldiers.

When tragedy threatens — Marie is revealed to be a noblewoman’s lost daughter and then willy-nilly engaged to a duke — Ms. Park was a portrait of sorrow in the aria Il faut partir, her face downcast, her pink regimental cap clutched forlornly to her chest.

And when she faces off against her kinswoman the Marquise of Berkenfeld (Met mezzo-soprano Karolina Pilou), Ms. Park proved a spitfire, stamping her feet as she rebels against being made to sing ladylike songs.

Bass-baritone Adelmo Guidarelli plays Sgt. Sulpice, Marie’s father-figure among the soldiers, who joins her in singing the regimental song instead.

What’s to become of Marie, separated from everyone she loves? The plot thickens once again with the arrival of the non-singing Duchess of Crackentorp (Mr. Dietz with a crown atop his turban), whose entrance in Ms. Taucher’s production is heralded by the Jaws theme song by John Williams.

Goofy moments like this one, and the decidedly quirky costumes — pink and purple camouflage with medals; an absurd number of feathers on Sgt. Sulpice’s cap — only enhance the fun of Ms. Taucher’s comic operas. It turns out that laughing and listening go well together, when the humor serves the story.

By the end of Friday’s performance, the audience was on its feet applauding and cheering. Following the opera, the cast joined ticketholders for a gala dinner honoring pianist Delores Stevens, who founded the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society 48 years ago.

La fille du régiment plays at 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the tent at Featherstone; information and tickets: wendytaucherdanceoperatheater.com.