When it was new, Sweeney Todd was a shocker. Now, most places, it’s not. To judge from the current Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, American audiences embrace Sweeney Todd with the same good cheer as they do the Addams Family. That’s not the case in Zurich, where the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel throws all his formidable reserves of menace into the character of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The celebrated Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, once a prime avatar of svelte, randy youths like Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), joins in as a roly-poly Mrs. Lovett, overpowered and none too bright. The romantic young sailor Anthony Hope (his name says it all) is Elliot Madore, who could give the role the dreaminess his musical-comedy colleagues generally miss. Similarly, Heidi Stober lends the birdlike twitterings of Anthony’s beloved Johanna an unusually dulcet cast. The director Andreas Homoki, who once gave Zurich a fierce Punch-and-Judy-style Wozzeck, seems to be working in a similar but darker, grimly Dickensian vein. Having seen the trailer for the Zurich show, we’re almost too rattled to book. We wouldn’t miss it for anything. —Matthew Gurewitsch