Stale marzipan it may be, but given the appropriate set of protagonists, Charles Gounod's ponderous 1867 adaptation of Shakespeare's youthful tragedy still has the power to arouse the senses and engage, if not engulf, the soul. In Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko, the Los Angeles Opera has found doomed lovers who are as much star material as "star cross'd". Whatever else is lacking in the first west coast production of the opera here in 18 years, the Mexican tenor and Russian soprano radiate youthful ardour, stylistic sophistication and sheer theatrical magic.

Netrebko, centre of a huge publicity build-up, is every inch the charismatic beauty demanded by the age of music videos, physically convincing in an undraped bedroom scene, rapturous and accurate in Juliette's waltz song and stirring in her decision to defy society for the sake of true love. Villazón heads the list of Hispanic tenors currently infusing international opera houses with desperately needed charisma. He is fit, immensely appealing and gifted with the musicianship to savour Gounod's lyric writing throughout a wide dynamic palette.

Villazón is also actor enough to confer credibility on the more outlandish details of Ian Judge's monumentally overreaching production. Is there another tenor who could roll around the stage in the throes of infatuation without generating laughter? Judge has updated the opera without inflicting much damage, while John Gunter's design scheme is dominated by multi-tiered mobile scaffolding. Only a duel with daggers cries anachronism and Netrebko looks ravishing in Tim Goodchild's Second Empire finery.

The superior cast includes a piquant Stéphanofrom mezzo-soprano Anna-Maria Panzarella, costumed to resemble George Sand, and a mellifluous Mercutio from baritone Marc Barrard, who dispatched the Queen Mab ariette with panache. In his company debut, the Vienna State Opera's Frédéric Chaslin conducted Gounod's faded opus with both crudity and uncommon conviction. Call it an act of heroism.

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