David McVicar's production of Carmen, considered controversial when it opened earlier this year, squarely anchors Bizet's masterpiece in the tradition of French naturalism. That this should faze some people is perhaps an indication of how views of the opera have changed over the years. Many still think of it as a tragic love story played out in an exotic and hence safe setting. Bizet, however, was taking opera into territory both daunting and new.

Carmen first appeared in 1875. For many, Bizet's study of the fluid vagaries of sexuality, presented on stage in a brutal setting, was beyond the pale. The opera was initially received with the same mixture of prurience and fury that greeted Zola's L'Assommoir the following year. It should still be both shocking and overwhelming, and in McVicar's hands it largely is.

He keeps Hispanicisms to a minimum, allowing the tragedy to evolve deterministically in the carefully detailed squalor of an underground world. Trapped into joining the smugglers, Jose responds by attacking Carmen in a violent sexual assault that destroys their relationship before it has begun. Carmen and Escamillo later fall deeply in love - this, overlooked by some directors, is true to the score - which makes her subsequent murder all the more ironic.

Revived by Lee Blakeley for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, the production has lost a few bits of its original set, as well as the stage clatter that some found distracting during the first run. It remains, however, a forceful study of what Zola called "the human animal" in all its messy glory.

Noted for the two Swedish divas sharing the title role at the main festival, it is now dominated by Peter Auty's outstanding Jose, innocent if bullish in appearance, and sung with deceptive sweetness - until a sudden rasp makes you realise the man is a psychopath.

Christine Rice's Carmen is vocally rather than physically dangerous, unleashing a torrent of disquietingly sexual sound that compensates for an occasional absence of dramatic vitality. David Kempster is a very raunchy Escamillo, while Helen Williams's Micaela is fiercely intense, if less lyrical than most. It is conducted by Louis Langrée a trifle overemphatically, though his judgement of the dark colours of Bizet's orchestration is immaculate.

· In rep until October 24. Box office: 01273 813813. Then touring to Plymouth, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Woking, Stoke-on-Trent and Oxford.