Only in retrospect do I realize how wary I was about "West Side Story," which opened Tuesday as the finale of this Pittsburgh CLO summer season. But all's well: director Van Kaplan and choreographer Mark Esposito's production soars where it most needs to soar, on its feet.

My wariness was mainly generational, perhaps. "West Side Story" is just one of many musicals that have been hailed as stylistically mold-breaking. Like "Hair," "Rent" and even "Grease," it also brought a fresh wave of youthful passion to the musical stage. But it did it when I was young and just falling in wary love with musicals, so it left the larger mark.

No production has been able to match that since. I won't claim that this CLO revival goes that far, but it does blow away the cobwebs and realize the rich Robbins-Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim lyricism. Looking back Tuesday night from 50 years later, it took only the physical exultation of the prologue to remind me it was "West Side Story" that first taught me to love ballet, though at the time I hardly knew what that was.

Otherwise, sure, if you focus too literally on the story, it does creak a little. Walter Kerr's review of the original production called it "savage, restless, electrifying," with a "catastrophic roar" and "intolerable tension." I won't claim all that; it's just too familiar. Waves of drugs, more powerful weapons and deadlier ethnic hatreds have rendered some of the details almost quaint.

But when the passion and pulse of the dance are this fresh, the story recedes into mythic parable. Which is what it is, of course -- that romantic "Romeo and Juliet" myth of romantic self-sacrifice for love.

"West Side Story" goes Shakespeare one better by having its Juliet, Maria, hold out against the seductive allure of tragic death. She has to hold her head up high in tragic dignity, because in the world of the musical, Shakespeare's adults have dwindled away to an ineffectual, hateful remnant. The musical focuses relentlessly on the kids. In its world, Tony and Maria even have to marry themselves.

There's sentimentality in that -- these young are too ready to blame the world as they found it, not yet realizing it's theirs to re-make. But in effect they do start to re-make it through physical grace and passion, as every generation should.

So the center of attention this week and next at the Benedum is rightfully on the dancing ensemble, enhanced for this show with fresh troops and unveiled in an opening-night performance of expressive grace.

Taking top vocal honors is the Tony of Max von Essen, who has only to open his heart in "Something's Coming" to lift ours. He feels a shade old for the role -- perhaps "Spring Awakening" has raised the bar for more age-appropriate young performers -- but his vocal purity and charming optimism more than compensate.

Ali Ewoldt is a very sweet Maria with an almost equally lyrical voice. I love the pair in duet, their voices coupling and uncoupling in the air above. All I miss is her full rise to tragic grandeur at the end. (But she shouldn't have to compete with Lt. Schrank and Chino left standing on stage, a rare glitch in direction.)

Monoly Farrell's Anita has plenty of sass and channels the full horror of her near-rape at Doc's drugstore. Wilson Mendieta's Bernardo is charming, though I'd like a sharper edge, and Spencer Howard's Riff is a virile presence. He's also fight captain, which is appropriate.

A full partner in both dance and song is the rich, 24-piece pit orchestra, as close to the 30 pieces for which "West Side Story" was originally scored as you're likely to get, short of one of those opera company productions. Those, however, struggle to achieve the immediacy of this. Kaplan can be proud of his production, his casting and his company.