Musical theatre and cabaret favorite Melissa Errico takes her cue from the milieu of old movies with detectives and danger, glamorous gloom, romance and regrets. Out of the Dark–The Film Noir Project broadens the pool of source material beyond actual golden moments from the silver screen, but everything shines in a burnished way. It’s more about casting a spell of elegance and misty memory than mining for melodrama or flouncing about as a femme fatale. It’s lush, but not lively, to be sure. The gear shift is set on languid and rarely veers from that in its 17 tracks. (The sassy “Checks My Heart” is the one change-of-pace pick-me-up.) With the consistently lovely, super-smooth Errico voice accompanied by the restrained simpatico grace of pianist Tedd Firth and other atmosphere-supplying musicians on some selections, it’s a nice place to stay floating. Get cozy.

In its successful quest for chic mystique, Out of the Dark combines a few newer things with a wide variety of old things that now seem to share mournful musical DNA, like the opener, “Angel Eyes” (with its rarely employed long introductory verse), followed with “With Every Breath I Take” from the Broadway musical City of Angels. Songs sigh with a bittersweet air, but aren’t shrugged off. Melissa Errico has a quiet confidence that allows her to be emotional and involved without breaking a sweat or ever breaking into histrionics or belting. Further in the tunnel of love’s rear-view mirror is a measured “The Man That Got Away,” prompting none of its typical throbbing anguish. The surprisingly welcome wistfulness is a refreshing approach.

Things are plush and pretty, but not pallid. Her “Haunted Heart” breaks without a crashing sound. Images swirl at a comfortably low velocity, as in “Laura”; its David Raksin melody was the instrumental theme for the 1944 film of the same name, although its Johnny Mercer lyric was a better-belated-than-never afterthought a year later. Another Raksin movie theme is likewise a formidable and very classy presence: “The Bad and the Beautiful” (lyric by Dory Previn).

Adding to the sense of “special occasion” are the aforementioned things that are new–fully new or pre-existing melodies with recently added lyrics. Among these are two that meld David Shire’s melodies with Adam Gopnik’s words, one is added to the theme from 1975’s Farewell, My Lovely, and a recent collaboration called “Shadows and Light,” which epitomizes the ambiance sought out for Out of the Dark. Gopnik and the late Peter Foley collaborated on the very engaging “We Live, We Love, We Lie, We Die” (“On vita, on aim”), sung in English and in French.

The live version of this project makes a return visit to Manhattan’s Feinstein’s/54 Below on May 11. I’m told that physical CDs will be available around the date of that Noir soiree.