 First, within the framework of the story, he makes bizarre things happen, and turns the world on its head.Thus the Learned Judge marries the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphose into aesthetes, and so on, and nearly every opera is resolved by a deft moving of the goalposts ... His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural.In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way."