Martin Lloyd-Evans's production of The Queen of Spades updates Tchaikovsky's tremendous study of obsession from the 18th century to the years immediately preceding the Russian revolution. The transposition redefines the opera, usually perceived as psychodrama, in terms of social conflict: Hermann's tragedy is presented as deriving as much from class prejudice as from the delusions that lurk in his tortured imagination, while his final mental collapse is both symptomatic and emblematic of a society sliding towards chaos.

Some of it is a bit heavy-handed. Crowds of dispossessed peasants gather on the tiers of Jamie Vartan's set to gaze implacably on the aristocratic and bourgeois misdemeanours enacted down below. Later on, revolutionaries storm the ball where Orla Boylan's Lisa breaks with sexual convention by rejecting Mark Stone's Yeletsky for Pawel Wunder's Hermann. Paradoxically, however, Lloyd-Evans is at his best when he sweeps some of this Brechtian paraphernalia away. The climactic encounter between Hermann and the Countess (Carole Wilson) is astonishingly handled - at once fierce in its compassion and disturbing in its examination of images of physical decline.

Musically, the evening provokes a similarly divided response. Stuart Stratford's conducting combines detail with passion, and the City of London Sinfonia's playing is all oily sensuality and brooding menace. The score has been cut, however, with the most drastic omission being the second-act Pastorale. Wunder (unwell on opening night) sounded pushed beyond his vocal limits, though Boylan, Stone and Wilson are exceptionally fine. Boylan is rapturous and profoundly touching. Stone suggests Yeletsky's snobbish diffidence as well as his proud charm. And Wilson superbly conveys the psychological terrors that lurk behind the Countess's steely public persona. An uneven performance, though the best of it is fascinating.

· Until August 4. Box office: 0845 230 9796.