Gloriana; 66th Aldeburgh festival – review

Britten's Gloriana, written to honour the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, was a flop at its Covent Garden premiere in 1953. An unfortunate attempt to revive it – a decade later on the composer's 50th birthday – coincided with the assassination of JF Kennedy. Despite Opera North's excellent production in 1992, this queasy study of the ageing Elizabeth I, and her infatuation with the young Earl of Essex, has always seemed blighted.

For Britten's centenary, as well as the diamond jubilee of the coronation, the Royal Opera has dared attempt a new staging, already seen in Hamburg, by Richard Jones. Back in the 1950s the fear was that Britten had created a grim operatic almanac for the new queen's reign: foolish or recalcitrant courtiers, unrequited crushes on young lords in yellow hose and the humiliation of being caught sans wig by the object of your desire.

Today, royal hair and marbles intact, no such insult or confusion is possible. As if to prove the point, on Thursday – the day the curtain rose on Gloriana – the Queen made history as the first monarch to win the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot. Or her horse did. Equestrianism features in Gloriana too, but only with a rather tame joust at the start between two pretty young nobleman with nice ankles.

Thanks to a strong ensemble cast led by Susan Bullock and Toby Spence and conducted by Paul Daniel, the production is a roaring success, even if the work itself remains a dodo. Jones is the ideal choice of director, bringing tenderness to intimate moments, splendour to the grand choruses and extensive pageantry. His suburban Tudorbethan Falstaff, currently triumphing in its Glyndebourne revival, might have been a dry run for the world he and his designer Ultz create here.

The action, if such it can be called, happens as an am-dram play in a 1950s village hall, two Elizabethan eras merged into one in crazed mirror image. Our newly crowned monarch, evidently on a royal visit, walks past in "La Cigale" Dior-style dress, attended by a mayor and half a corporation. Prize marrows and a group of handbell enthusiasts convey notions of postwar modesty and aspiration. Locals in brown overalls, tweeds and woollies watch this enactment of merrie England, when armadas were seen off and men wore tights. All is furnished – or "besprent" as the dire cod-Elizabethiana text by William Plomer might have it – with bright, toy colours and visual wit.

It's a wonder Britten didn't return the entire libretto to sender. The sample line "Your plainings I can ne'er refuse" is plum Plomer, and can anyone really sing "supersedeth"? In words that make Wagner's views on German nationhood seem more benign, Plomer described Elizabeth I's golden fame as "part of our racial memory, part of every educated or part-educated Englishman's conception of our national character and destiny". As a part-educated Englishwoman, I suggest trying that one out in thine local Tesco.

As with Britten's Albert Herring, Gloriana has stopped appearing out of date and ripened into history. It is better for it. There's wonderful music, as well as superb performances from Bullock (at her best), Spence (worth the ticket just to see his smiling frolicks and let's not mention his legs), Patricia Bardon, Mark Stone, Kate Royal, Clive Bayley and everyone else, including chorus and orchestra. See it on Monday 24 June in cinemas.

Tonight, the festival Britten founded with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, ends in Snape Maltings with his most popular work, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, as well as the last of this year's commissioned premieres (by Wolfgang Rihm) – a key feature of the 66th Aldeburgh festival, which has honoured Britten rather than genuflected.

In a day of tribute to Jonathan Harvey, who died last year, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ilan Volkov gave the UK premiere of 80 Breaths from Tokyo (2010). This delicate, Buddhist-inspired work, complete with glass chimes, Taiwan temple bowls and electronics, explored Zen breathing via elements of repetition. The premiere of Charlotte Bray's Fire Burning in Snow – a highlight of BCMG's Chamber Music Century – was vividly delivered by mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer, who even wore red shoes to match a line in Nicki Jackowska's poems.

Smaller in forces yet towering in impact, Harrison Birtwistle's Songs from the Same Earth (2013) demands acute concentration. A first hearing, though the crystalline, minimal scoring is immediate in effect, takes us only to the threshold of this 40-minute cycle for tenor and piano. Ten poems, independent yet breathing the same air of memory and melancholy, begin in silence and end with a momentary gleam. The poet is David Harsent, librettist of Gawain and The Minotaur, who would never write "supersedeth" except under a pseudonym. Mark Padmore and pianist Andrew West matched the oscillations of text and music to perfection. All fed into their compelling performance of Schumann's Dichterliebe – a pinnacle of German lieder that Britten and Pears performed in the National Gallery in October 1942, when London was being bombed by the Luftwaffe.

As if in oblique reminder, a Spitfire swooped low then circled away to invisibility, marking the dramatic start of Peter Grimes on the beach at Aldeburgh, the most talked about event of the season, not least sartorially. (Hoodies are now de rigueur at the opera.) No one present will forget Alan Oke, a noble and poetic Grimes, standing high amid upturned fishing boats, an outsider against the elements, fighting real, gusty winds to be heard.

The whole enterprise, written about exhaustively elsewhere, was a feat on the part of director Tim Albery, his technical crew and his fearless singers. Each deserves highest praise for a Peter Grimes like no other. While a chill nor'easterly, as Plomer might have put it, whipped around our ears, we too became part of the action. I hear rumour that the same team has its sights on Tristan und Isolde at Mousehole.