"Don't come. It's not a good idea."

Cirque du Soleil has been on defense with the show, which celebrates its "black carpet" celebrity opening at Luxor today. Five weeks of ticketed previews have generated some hostile audience reaction and spread opinion that "Believe" is a big bore and/or short on magic.

Denoncourt and his collaborators have been tweaking and tightening, but they admit the larger battle is one of perception. The show's title is now a trust issue the creators surely never intended: Will Angel fans buy into an operatic production that isn't the rock 'n' roll magic show they believe they're coming to see?

"It's not 'Mindfreak,' and we never said it was," the director says of the A&E cable hit that put Angel on the map of public awareness. "How do you want me to make Criss walk on Lake Mead onstage? Or jump from a helicopter onstage? That's impossible."

But the affable Canadian director and his collaborators may have underestimated the disconnect between Angel's image and a dreamlike narrative not constructed around magic's traditional punch lines -- the "Ta-da!" as Denoncourt likes to call them.

Failure has not been an option for Cirque. The company dominates Las Vegas entertainment with six shows on the Strip, another in the pipeline (for CityCenter) and 101,000 tickets to sell each week.

If "Believe" follows the path of two other titles that first underwhelmed -- "Zumanity" and "Ka" -- the company will continue to fine-tune for months, if needed.

But the big picture of "Believe" can't be altered with minor tweaks, and it can't succeed without changing expectations.

Angel "is an artist. He is not a magician," Denoncourt says. "He's 40 and he's clever enough in the long term to say, 'I cannot be that boy "Mindfreak" for the rest of my life.' "

Angel declined a new interview after previews began; his publicist says he and Denoncourt speak with one voice.

Last month, before the first preview, Angel said the new show is "challenging everything Cirque du Soleil is about and everything Criss Angel is about. We're challenging each other to be vulnerable and go into areas where neither one of us ever journeyed.

"The end result is art we haven't seen in any Cirque show or any magic show."

But this is the first Cirque to ride on the name of one star. And Denoncourt understands "people love to hate famous people." One credit that scored him this job was staging tours for Italian singer Eros Ramazzotti (big in Europe, obscure in the United States). When star productions are criticized, "I'm not always sure we're talking about the show."

But the director also worked with two Italian variety performers: quick-change artist Arturo Brachetti and magician Gaetano Triggiano, whose "Tabló," has a YouTube commercial bearing strong similarities to the style and tone of "Believe" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR2lJR7PY6U).

Denoncourt says "Tabló" proved magic could incorporate a theatrical narrative. When he met Angel, the director remembers asking: "Really, what do we want to do? Because we can do tricks" one after another.

"He said, 'No way.'

"I said, 'OK, I am so glad to hear that. We'll go on a risky way if you're OK with that.' And we went on a risky way."

And so "Believe" starts out on a familiar course, before a twist sends it into a Cirque world inspired by "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz." Rabbits talk, monsters stalk and Angel cheats death in pursuit of true love.

Denoncourt says his friends were shocked that he slipped a nod to Anton Chekhov into a funeral scene.

"If not, I'm not who I am," says the director, whose credits include a version of Chekhov's "The Seagull" where the actors fall out of character to discuss the play.

"The best gift I can have," he admits, is to spot hankies coming out for the show's emotional payoff. But a more dominant opinion from previews is that "Believe" is light on astonishment; that the magic doesn't hold up to Angel's claims of "revolutionary illusions" that "reinvent magic like Cirque did for the circus."

Angel even claims one illusion uses technology "developed for two people in the world." One client is NASA, "for the space shuttle," and the other is him.

Denoncourt qualifies those claims. "What was misinterpreted, I think, was everybody was expecting new magic. That doesn't exist.

"There (are) six famous tricks in the world. ... You can disappear, you can fly, it's all the same tricks. What makes a big difference is the envelope; what's around (the illusion). That's where the show is different."

Both director and magician point out the classic illusions are staged in new ways, without boxes to conceal them.

Denoncourt is offered the comparison of when Celine Dion was placed into a Cirque-like world for "A New Day," then gradually warmed the show to her own personality.

"It's not trapping him in a show where he doesn't belong," the director asserts. "On the contrary, what will surprise the people is the fact that he wanted to go there.

"We're not coming from the same world," Denoncourt says of his star. "But he's so honest, what you see is what you get. I love him, and I love him because I push him sometimes to say, 'Are you crazy enough to do that?'

" 'Yes, let's go. Let's try.' "

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.