For its first production of the New Year, the Dicapo Opera Theatre romped through the New York premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's frothy farce "The Hotel Casablanca" (2007), after Georges Feydeau's play "La Puce à l'oreille" (A Flea in Her Ear, 1907), on January 22. In this broad battle-of-the-sexes comedy, a young nephew's indiscretion is taken for that of his married uncle, the women set a trap for the men, the men come gunning for the women, there are over-the-top disguises, outsized emotions, mistaken identities, a misdirected love letter, a pair of suspenders left at a notorious hotel, people hiding under a bed-all the elements one expects, moved to late-1940s Texas, complete with oil wells in the background.

The protagonists were Tallulah (soprano Molly Mustonen) and Tom (baritone Chad Armstrong) Carter, owners of the Double T Ranch. Mustonen offered lavishly vocalized laments about Tom's suspected infidelity. Armstrong sang loving paeans to his spouse in a polished instrument and expressed fears that his nephew, Charles' (tenor Matthew Velis) citified ways-he likes "antique stores and Broadway musicals" and "Hollywood movie"s-might mean that he doesn't "like girls"! Little do Tallulah and Tom know that it was Charles who left his uncle's distinctive red, white and blue suspenders at the hotel, during a date with one Muffy, now dismissed, and where he is overjoyed to be returning, ending the first act-"I'm going to the Hotel Casablanca ... again"-with a ringing high A. Charles and the butler, Burton (baritone Dane Reese), once Tallulah's partner in vaudeville, sing a buffo duet, asserting that "everything is bigger in Texas," replete with bawdy punch lines.

Tallulah and Tom's friends are melodramatic opera buffs Lucy (soprano Sara Stewart) and Raul (tenor Ubaldo Feliciano-Hernández) Perez, whose music is rich in quotations from "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Madama Butterfly," "Carmen," "Tosca," and "Otello." It is Lucy, inspired by "Figaro," who comes up with the scheme to write a torrid, unsigned missive, arranging an assignation, to catch Tom in the act, to music borrowed from the "Figaro" "Canzonetta sull'aria ... Che soave zefiretto" letter duet and, more ominously, from "Tristan und Isolde."

Mezzo-soprano Selena Moretz, as Miss Pooder, who bought the Hotel Casablanca, cousin apparently, to Blanche Dubois' louche Flamingo/Tarantula Arms, to clean it up, after it had fallen into "disrepair and disrepute," rhapsodized expansively about her new pet project, and soprano Antoni Mendezona, substituting for an indisposed Lynne Abeles, as her employee Daisy, who wants to be known as Veronique, waxed no less rhapsodic about her ambition to become a movie star, her aria punctuated by an ornate coloratura figure. What matches Miss Pooder and Veronique make for ranch hand Tobias (baritone Michael Callas) and, to Uncle Tom's relief, Charles ("Then you do like girls!"), for, as Burton helpfully observes, "Mr. Charles is popping wood," thanks to the aspiring starlet.

The finale, led off by Tallulah-"What a day, 'All's Well That Ends Well,' they say"-is pure "Figaro" in spirit, with its revelations, resolution, and forgiveness granted.

Conductor James Lowe and director and choreographer Francine Harman presided over this sprightly premiere. John Farrell (sets), Angela Huff (costumes), and Susan Roth (lighting) were responsible for designs. "Hotel Casablanca" was slated for repetitions on January 23 at 8 p.m. and 24 at 4 p.m. According to Dicapo General Director Michael Capasso, the company will present a new work by Pasatieri next season.

New music is on Dicapo's agenda next month as well, with the world premiere of Italian composer Francesco Cilluffo's "Il Caso Mortara" (The Mortara Case), concerning a Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, secretly baptized, abducted by Papal authorities, raised as a Christian, and rising to prominence in the Augustine Order in the mid-1800s. Performances are on February 25 at 7:30 p.m., 27 and March 5 at 8 p.m., and 7 at 4 p.m. For tickets at $50, visit www.dicapo.com, call 212/868-4444, or come to the box office, downstairs at the St. Jean Baptiste Church at 184 East 76th Street, at Lexington Avenue, before performances.