Smetana's Bartered Bride is one of those operas so comfortably set in its own cliches that you always know what to expect: formulaic comedy, frolicking peasants, and a tired old sight gag with a bear. Five years ago, Daniel Slater's groundbreaking Opera North production changed all that by introducing an austere, eastern bloc aesthetic, jettisoning whimsical folksiness in favour of power lines, walrus moustaches and polyester jackets.

Slater and designer Robert Innes Hopkins travelled extensively throughout the Czech Republic to identify the right sort of ugliness. But though the influences may be dour, the show is anything but drab. In fact, it's one of the most vivaciously animated opera productions in years.

Slater's great insight is that at the heart of all Smetana's opera is the chorus, and by investing each member of the chorus with an individual personality, The Bartered Bride becomes as much an opera about community (and a repressive one at that) as Britten's Peter Grimes.

Surprisingly, this animates the comedy rather than suppresses it. Although the production was originally conceived well before The Office became a television phenomenon, Jeremy White's corpulent, coercive marriage-broker Kecal is clearly an east European ancestor of David Brent.

Giselle Allen and Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts make an ardent and attractively sung Marenka and Jenik, proving that true love can always shine through hideous clothes, while Iain Paton's trembling mummy's boy Vasek has the callow look of Gareth Gates. Add to this the whirlwind conducting of Martyn Brabbins and a sensational circus sequence, and you have a production that could yet bring the mullet back into fashion.

· Further performances this Thursday and February 5, 10, 12. Box office: 0113-222 6222. Then touring.