The ogre of the Paris Opera House is alive and well, reigning with terror over Des Moines.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's sensual drama "The Phantom of the Opera," which opened Wednesday at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines to an audience of 1,843, chronicles the tale of the Phantom of the Paris Opera House (Brad Little) and his young ingenue Christine Daae (Rebecca Pitcher).

The story begins in 1911 at an auction. The contents of the Paris Opera House are on the block. The items include a papier-mache music box in the shape of a barrel organ. Attached is a monkey dressed in Persian robes and playing the cymbals. Lot number 666 is the famous chandelier, also a star of the show.

Each of the auctioned items plays a role in the story, beginning when we flash back to 1881 and a dress rehearsal for "Hannibal" at the opera house.

Young Christine Daae, a soprano who has been training with a "mysterious" teacher, gets her big singing break. Pitcher is graceful as Christine, specializing in the florid note decorating with which she is charged.

Her chemistry with Little is perfect. Their performance of "Past the Point of No Return" delivers an emotional thrill.

Little"s voice pours out like liquid velvet, and his form glides around the stage in the same manner. Whether off on a fit of rage or lustfully peering into Christine's eyes, Little's portrayal of the Phantom is captivating.

Adding to the intrigue and drama is the performance by Tim Martin Gleason as Raoul. Gleason's baritone voice folds flawlessly with Pitcher's for "All I Ask of You." He longs for a relationship with Christine, which makes for a tragic love triangle.

Julie Schmidt (Carlotta Giudicelli) also turns in a memorable performance. Her soprano voice helps propel the story with her tired opera diva antics and believable Italian accent.

Audiences seeing "Phantom" for the first or 10th time will be impressed by the set, including the Phantom's labyrinth and the gilded figures, as well as the story, and, of course, the music.

Most of the special effects - the fall of the chandelier, the flashes from the Phantom's skull on a staff and the gunshots - made even the seasoned "Phantom"-goer flinch.

Unfortunately, the first appearance of the Phantom's gondola under the opera house was not quite so compelling. In this scene, there was insufficient fog being piped through the vents to mask the lower portion of the boat, creating an unfortunate distraction.

Technical aspects got back on track later, though, especially with the eerie and memorable effect of the candles illuminating their path.

One highlight of the performance came as the principal players sang "Prima Donna." Singing what seem to be streams of consciousness is always a musical accomplishment.

Principal conductor Glenn Langdon and the pit orchestra did a masterful job of emphasizing the alluring happenings on stage with perfect musical accentuation.

Floating into town on waves of publicity, Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" created intense, electric musical and dramatic magic Thursday night for 2,208 theater-goers in the Des Moines Civic Center, where the musical drama has settled in for a five-week run.

Lloyd Webber's lyrical, sexually charged melodrama - sung passionately and with vocal brilliance by stars brad Little and Kimilee Bryant and some equally talented colleagues - produced that magic despite a change in the show's original dramatic fireworks.

In this touring production, the grandest ever at the Civic Center, the famous chandelier falls; it doesn't "crash" the way it did in the London and New York incarnations I've seen.  "They stopped doing that," Civic Center Director Jeff Chelesvig said of the effect.  "People were getting scared."

So the chandelier - suspended above the first eight or 10 rows of seats - simply "falls" onto the stage. Effective, yes, but at this opening night performance, I missed the scare and the shivers that the swooshing crash used to generate when the hideous "Phantom" of the Paris Opera House tosses one of his nastiest fits of rage.

Rest easy, though. The special effects - and the elaborate gilded winged figures on the stage's proscenium arch - mostly live up to the hype for this tale of the "opera ghost" and the vengeance he wreaks upon an opera management that fails to do his bidding in the house he regards as his own.

The eerie and/or spectacular scenes were electrifying Thursday night:

• When the masked Phantom and his portage, the young singer Christine Daee, ride a boat through the huge lake under the opera house, a rolling lake mist and score of candles lighting their subterranean way make a haunting effect.
• Long chases through the opera house's dark, secret passageways are illusions, but they're believable - and scary.
• Throwing yet another of his temper tantrums, the Phantom emerges, eyes blazing and voice raging, from high above the stage, where he's perched in  a platform fronted by the largest of those winged figures.

Bryant's young, fresh agile soprano, which is both powerful and supple in coloratura passages, makes Christine a courageous and sympathetic heroine.

Together, the leads make seductive work of  "The Music of the Night" and thrumming intensities of  "The Point of No Return." (At Wednesday night's preview performance, understudies Thomas E. Cunningham  and Tamara Hayden sang the stars' roles, quite well, in fact.  Thursday night's performance, however, was keyed to a much more electrifying level.)

Julie Schmidt, singing hatchet-voiced "old Soprano, Carlotta Giudicelli, makes grand, amusing stuff of the character's prima donna antics, and Jason Pebworth, as Christine's  great love, Raoul, gives a first-rate romantic baritone to his "All I Ask of You" duet with the soprano.

The production, which comes in at 2 1/2 hours (including intermission), starts slowly, with the auction that introduces that chandelier, then shifts into flashback mode.  Highlights include the corlorful - gaudy,  actually - "Masquerade" number, done on a wide staircase,  Low lights (I guess you'd call them) center on numerous (deliberately) bad opera sequences.  If you're seeing the show  for a second or fifth time, that first-time frisson offright won't be there, but the special effects and Lloyd Webber's music  - lyrical and repetitive and hypnotic all at once  - ought to make a return visit worthwhile.

The pit orchestra, one of the most polished I've heard at road-show performances here, is under the direction of principal conductor Glenn Langdon.