Britney Spears opened her show at Mellon Arena last night strapped into place on a swinging metal platform.

And she didn't do a pole dance, either.

Not like last year out at the Post-Gazette Pavilion.

She's moving on, refusing to repeat her greatest spectacles of "Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman" sexuality -- the snake, the pole, the Catholic schoolgirl uniform -- without abandoning the qualities that made her America's sweetheart.

And it's not as though she's turned her back on spectacle.

The show began with Britney hanging face-down from a swinging metal platform, strapped in place and purring -- or seeming to purr -- "I'm not that innocent" while dressed in black but looking nothing like a female Johnny Cash.

It ended with her hanging from the ceiling in a harness, back arched, water dripping from the rhinestone cowgirl clothes she'd worn while strutting through an onstage downpour.

Nearly every song entailed an elaborate stage production with dancing and costumes and fire and flying and video footage. "I Love Rock 'n Roll," a Joan Jett tune that came off sounding like a hip-hop remix of an old Black Sabbath single with a female in for Ozzy, ended in the singer bungee-jumping off a flying platform.

Her costumes included a ballerina in a music box, a low-cut space-girl outfit for "Overprotected," a long fur coat for "Lucky," lime green go-go boots, a flowing scarf and not much else for "I'm A Slave 4 U," her latest hit, which Britney introduced by asking "Have you ever heard a song that kind of took over your body and you just lost control of yourself?"

It was the sexiest performance Britney Spears has ever done.

And that, my friend, is saying something.

If the crowd's reception to the new material was muted, there's a reason. "Britney" hasn't hit the streets yet. When it does, the kids will know to sing along to such obvious highlights as "Anticipating," "Boys" and "Overprotected."

In the meantime, they were right there in her corner for such hits as "Sometimes," "... Baby One More Time," "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know," "Stronger" and "Oops! I Did it Again."

When I walked in to write about the concert, someone asked if she was really singing. If you have to ask, you wouldn't like it. Britney rules a universe where art and artifice are flip sides of the same hit single.

And O-Town, the opener? Well, they're not the most endearing made-for-TV boy group of the past few years, but clearly, there was something cute enough about the music and the boys to keep the ladies screaming. Or it could have been the strictly PG-13 writhing. Either way, the boys can sing, especially that Jacob guy. If I were 'N Sync, though, I wouldn't sweat it -- anymore than I'd be sweating 98 Degrees or, for that matter, Andy Gibb.