Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, it has often been said, is all things to all people, and has been seen as everything from a knockabout pantomime to a supreme analysis of the role of knowledge in human progress. Of late, however, some have questioned the opera's value system, and we now have to acknowledge that both racism and sexism lurk beneath its surface. Pierre Audi's new Salzburg production, though imperfect, bravely examines its contradictions.

The opera depends for its dramatic clout on the audience's constantly shifting awareness of the moral worth of the protagonists, a device Audi re-deploys at times to startling effect. The three Boys first appear as fighter pilots; at first, this seems cute, though the image gradually becomes more sinister as the performance progresses. The sight of a stereotypically blacked-up Monostatos (Burkhard Ulrich) is wince-inducing - yet we're also soon aware that René Pape's Sarastro is a calculating bigot who has no room for anyone black in his "sacred halls". Audi also makes much of the destruction by male enlightenment values of relationships between women. The Queen of the Night (the fabulous Diana Damrau) is defeated but far from destroyed at the end: Genia Kühmeier's Pamina gazes at her mother in hellish indecision during the final chorus, while Pape stands between the two women clutching a broadsword, the ultimate symbol of masculine authority.

Not all of it works. The designs, by Karel Appel and Jorge Jara, are blindingly gaudy and a mish-mash of styles. Christian Gerhaher's dreadlocked Papageno doesn't attain the dramatic prominence one expects: Audi introduces him driving a clapped-out Citroën, which he unaccountably loses partway through. Audi's probing approach occasionally sits uneasily with Riccardo Muti's musical interpretation, which is very much a grand statement, noble in its splendour and genuinely sublime. The singing is faultless throughout.

· The Salzburg festival runs until August 31. Box office: (43) 662-8045-500.