Prom 60: The Marriage of Figaro – review

It takes time to adjust ear and eye alike when the intimately crafted balances of a Mozart opera are transported from the confines of the opera house at Glyndebourne to the wide open spaces of the Albert Hall. This Prom visit of the festival opera's new Figaro was no exception, with the period-instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on the stage and a pared-down version by Ian Rutherford – no open-top car this time – of Michael Grandage's 1960s updating acted out on a platform behind them.

The overture and the early scenes passed a little lifelessly as everyone found their feet, and the harpischord continuo was only ever a distant presence from my seat on the other side of the hall. But once Andrew Shore grabbed the performance by the scruff of the neck in Bartolo's vendetta aria, aided by some splendidly fruity horn playing, things began to engage and flow better.

Principal credit here went jointly to Robin Ticciati's well-paced conducting, which conjured some lovely lines from the OAE as the evening went on, and to the women principals in particular, who at times raised the performance to a level of real distinction. Sally Matthews's flower-child Countess was the pick of the bunch, and her Dove Sono in act three the most treasurably Mozartian piece of singing of the evening. But Isabel Leonard's Cherubino was special, too, and if Lydia Teuscher as Susanna never quite gripped the ensembles as the role makes possible, she gave the character an edge that went well beyond the conventional pert charmer. It was an honour, as always, to hear Ann Murray, once a great Cherubino and still in fine voice, as Marcellina. Given the sexual politics of the piece and of this production, the omission of her act-four aria was hard to justify.

The men were less special, not helped by a production that blurred the class and character distinctions between the Count and Figaro in ways the librettist and composer never intended. Vito Priante's vocally stylish Figaro coped better than Audun Iversen's Count, who had plenty of presence but rather ran out of steam by the time of a notably dark-edged final reconciliation scene.

Available on iPlayer until 4 September.