For some people, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is the perfect opera – good tunes, easy-to-follow plot, nobody gets hurt or dies, and a happy ending. Certainly, English Touring Opera’s new production, directed by Blanche McIntyre, is as genial as one could wish, helped, significantly, by Ross Ramgobin’s undoubted talent for comedy.

Ramgobin’s Figaro is no revolutionary; any animosity toward the Count is the result of the Count’s advances to Figaro’s bride, Susanna. He may sing of revenge, but only in the Act 4 shenanigans in the garden does that revenge begin to sound vindictive.

Of course, the #MeToo resonances are there aplenty and it is clear from Jeremy Sam’s English translation that the Count is after anything in a skirt. David Kimberg’s bemusement in Act 3 is a joy, as he is sure there is something going on but can’t quite see it. His graciousness at the end, when he realises he has been outsmarted, is genuine – but will it last? He said much the same at the end of Act 2.

Rachel Redmond is a pert and self-assured Susanna, loyal to the Countess, sung by Nadine Benjamin. When we first hear Benjamin, she is on her knees, and Porgi, amor is a prayer; later, Dove sono is as gorgeous as it should be.

Gamine Katherine Aitken erupts on stage as Cherubino, taking after the Count in his fascination with anything in a skirt. When the Count commissions him into the regiment to get him out of the house, Ramgobin’s Non piu andrai is gently teasing.

The claustrophobic nature of the Almaviva household is emphasised by the ease with which all classes mingle and barge into rooms, whether Marcellina (Gaynor Keeble, magnificent in black), the wonderfully oleaginous Don Basilio (John-Colyn Gyeantey) who at times looks like Tweedledum to Omar Ebrahim’s Tweedledee of a Bartolo. The Act 3 sextet in which Figaro’s parentage is unravelled, to the shock of Don Curzio (Stuart Haycock) and the Count, is deftly done – in fact, throughout the performance, the singers’ enunciation is exemplary.

Antonio is another barger; Devon Harrison conveys the right mix of righteous indignation, whether it be broken flower-pots or Cherubino dressing up as a girl in Antonio’s house.  His daughter Barbarina (Abigail Kelly) is keen to get Cherubino when she can, and not above playing on the Count’s pursuit of her.

Neil Irish’s set is well-judged for a touring production – a very large folding screen with doors and windows , which can be folded into different shapes for the rooms in the first three acts and, finally, with a night-scene of a garden for Act 4. It is adorned with chairs, sofa, chest, desk and plant pillars as appropriate, and lit by Rory Beaton.

Conductor Christopher Stark brings a good sound from the orchestra. In Act 2, Redmond’s guitar-playing to accompany Cherubino’s Voi, che sapete is nicely in time with the orchestral strings and, towards the end of Act 4, there is a seemingly endless pause before the Countess relents and tells the Count that ‘Piu docile sono’.