The Santa Fe Opera launched into its 55th season Friday night with its first-ever production of Charles Gounod's Faust, and it proved so colorful, fun and upbeat that it left the audience no choice but to smile. That reaction is not a given with Faust, which deals with tragic themes and destructive characters: The aged Faust, embittered and disillusioned, strikes a deal with Méphistophélès to reclaim his youth and, with it, the love of Marguerite, a virginal damsel who does not remain virginal for long. By the end, she has lost her mind, has killed the baby she bore to Faust, and, through divine intervention, ascends heavenward, here climbing up through a forest of organ pipes enveloped in gleaming C-major harmonies.

Director Stephen Lawless found the sweet spot this opera requires, allowing its forbidding plot to unroll in an atmosphere infused with wonder and humor. Rather than challenge us to ponder our own inner Fausts, this production aims to entertain us — a goal that seems perfectly suited to Gounod's delicious score and to the hodgepodge of dramaturgy drawn up by his librettists. Lawless confronts the work's Gothic excesses with tolerant sympathy, and sometimes he acknowledges their immoderation with subtle wit. Méphistophélès, for example, makes his entrance through the coffin Faust has prepared for himself, but the grimness of the moment is leavened by the fact that the devil wears a Jiminy Cricket-style stovepipe hat. In the Church Scene, a priest swooning at the organ like the Phantom of the Opera is revealed to be Méphistophélès, and when he gets up, the keyboard keeps playing on its own.

The production boasts extravagant, detailed sets (by Benoit Dugardyn) and costumes (by Sue Willmington), and the lighting (by Pat Collins) is dazzling. Everything unrolls in an indeterminate past, 19th-century in general flavor — and yet it is a 19th century in which the neighbor-lady Marthe can do some comic shtick with an electric flashlight. Following Faust's initial grumblings in his book-lined study, the action moves to a fairgrounds bustling with acrobats and side-show performers and a huge Ferris wheel in the background, the set perhaps inspired by boxes of Barnum's Animal Crackers. This is balanced in the evening's second half by the Act Four ballet, sometimes eliminated in productions but presented here in curtailed form. Instead of featuring the legendary beauties of antiquity (as in the score), Lawless transforms the characters into six famous heroines of French opera. They appear in vitrines, dolled up like beauties on 19th-century cigar boxes, and their often amusing choreography (by Nicola Bowie) allows touches of camp sensibility that stretch to a belly dance by Dalilah and a peacock feather fan-dance by Cléopâtre.

On opening night, the back of the stage led the eye directly to the flames and smoke of the Las Conchas Fire, which just about then was passing the 100,000-acre mark. The cast has been working in an intermittently caustic atmosphere that has left many Santa Feans hoarse. One sensed inevitable strain in some of the singing, but under such circumstances the performers acquitted themselves heroically and the singing was never less than adequate.

The most satisfying performance came from American tenor Bryan Hymel in the title role. His voice is high-placed yet full in body, exciting in its visceral punch, beautifully suited for French roles of this sort. He infused his interpretation with phrasing that seemed blessedly old-fashioned in its stylistic distinctiveness. In comparison, soprano Ailyn Pérez (as Marguerite) was a characteristically modern opera singer, more of a vocal generalist, boasting an attractive voice and a mostly secure technique, but falling a bit short in the diction department. She proved a good actor, vainly air-headed in the Garden Scene, emotionally sincere in the sadder stretches of the drama, drawing the audience close to her doomed situation.

Bass-baritone Mark S. Doss, who has often portrayed the role of Méphistophélès, also was a winning presence on stage, although his singing, however full of character, seemed light for the part and might have benefited from a tighter center on the attack of pitches. Still, who wouldn't be seduced by this devil?

In the secondary parts, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Holloway was a model of the pants-role singer as Siébel, modulating her voice with firm elegance and remaining unfazed by a minor set malfunction during her Act Three aria; mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton tickled the risibilities as the odd neighbor Marthe; the high baritone Matthew Worth, in the ungrateful part of Marguerite's priggish brother Valentin, warmed into his fourth-act scene; and apprentice baritone Darik Knutsen was pleasing as Valentin's friend Wagner. The apprentices sang beautifully in the famous Soldiers' Chorus, although it was the one place I felt the stage direction erred on the side of gravity, parading coffins of slain soldiers through a scene that, musically, is just one epaulette short of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Frédéric Chaslin, appearing for the first time in his role as the company's chief conductor, impressed thoroughly in the pit. He drew an intense, reedy timbre from the orchestra (sometimes threatening to overpower the singers), and he infused the score with rhythmic tautness and verve. This performance had "oomph," and it never lagged through its considerable running time of 3 1/2 hours, keeping the audience rapt through to the transcendent final pages.