Le Nozze di Figaro – review

Michael Grandage's staging of Le Nozze di Figaro, new to the festival last year, returns in a revival directed by Ian Rutherford, in whose hands there have been gains in sharpness of focus, while some uncertainties still remain.

Grandage kept the opera's Spanish setting but updated the work to the last years of Franco's regime in the early 1970s, though the expected political gloss never really materialises. The hi-tech apparatus that was missing on tour – the revolving sets, the Count's sports car – has been restored, but now feels gimmicky if you saw the production without it.

The drastic change, however, concerns the Count himself, whose promiscuity, in the context of 1970s ideas about open sexuality, originally turned him into a greater social rebel than Figaro. In a superbly judged performance, however, Joshua Hopkins makes him sinister as well as sexy.

Barbarina's friends can't keep their hands off him – but his proprietorial attitude to the Countess (Amanda Majeski) constantly threatens to tip into violence, and his harassment of Laura Tatulescu's Susanna is so brutally persistent as to arouse genuine disquiet. Figaro (Adam Plachetka) has a truly dangerous opponent on his hands, and the dividends in terms of emotional and social resonance are tremendous.

It's beautifully sung and acted, though Tatulescu occasionally overdoes it and makes Susanna seem hyperactive. Plachetka's passionate directness offsets Majeski's poise and Hopkins's manipulative suavity. There's a great Cherubino, funny yet touching, from Lydia Teuscher.

Conductor Jérémie Rohrer is as fine a Mozartian as one could wish, and the LPO's playing is electric in its energy and detail.

The original production will be streamed at guardian.co.uk/glyndebourne from 12 July-31 August.