One of the most sophisticated games ever played by a composer and librettist with an audience, Mozart's opera was damned as trivial by the 19th century, but steadily came into its own in the 20th, when the cracks that open up and finally shatter the certainties of its two pairs of lovers began to intrigue directors. But it's never easy to get the balance of comedy and seriousness right. Nicholas Hytner's summer Glyndebourne production, with an uneven cast, didn't quite do so. Revived here with impeccable discrimination for Glyndebourne on Tour by Samantha Potter, working with an ensemble of singers more finely balanced both vocally and dramatically, a closer approach to the heart of this enigmatic and endlessly fascinating piece is achieved.
The visuals remain essentially the same. Vicki Mortimer's lived-in Neapolitan villa superficially suggests Sir Thomas Beecham's famous view that the opera presents "a long summer day spent in a cloudless land by a southern sea," but the clouds certainly gather on the faces of this cast before long. Andrew Kennedy's dangerously volatile Ferrando is nicely complemented by the cocksure Guglielmo of Rodion Pogossov, who has a touch of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat about him in his Albanian brigand disguise. They barely maintain control as their charade to test their girlfriends swings round and bites them back.
Their victims - Aga Mikolaj's Fiordiligi and Jenny Carlstedt's Dorabella - purvey a nice line in sentimental ingenuousness before their tragicomic slide from idealism to pragmatism. And Claire Ormshaw's streetwise Despina brings a whole range of skills to further the manipulative schemes of Henry Waddington's vigilant Don Alfonso.
Vocally, the showpiece arias are presented with technical skill, and the ensembles with chamber-music-like finesse. Conductor Gerard Korsten maintains an unbroken sequence of well-judged tempo choices and there's some apt period style from the orchestra.
· In rep until October 26. Box office: 01273 813813. Then touring.