Exquisiteness is so much the concern of "A Little Night Music," a beautifully designed and staged operetta of intimate proportions … that there is little room for the breath of life.

Derived from an Ingmar Bergman movie, "Smiles of a Summer Night," it takes place at the turn of the century in Sweden, where a handful of people—including a married lawyer and an actress—are caught up in the vagaries of love. Light mockery and occasional laughter float on the sweetly-scented night air, but the atmosphere is sterile. Though much of the talk and activity are given over to sex, there seems to be little of it around.

Stephen Sondheim's carefully wrought score, which never opens itself to an actual love song, is entirely in waltz time or variations on it. It is delicate in nature and creates, with its excellently shaped lyrics, something of the effect of...