Much has been made of the supposed intractability of Owen Wingrave, Benjamin Britten's penultimate opera, dating from 1971. It was originally written for television, a medium with which Britten professed to be unhappy and subsequent outings have been rare. Its most recent UK staging, by the Royal Opera at the Linbury Studio, was so woefully inadequate that many questioned its viability.

Any doubts as to its worth, however, were quashed by this performance, conducted by Richard Hickox, who exposed, often with lethal precision, the moral paradox at the work's centre. In depicting Owen's determination to come out to his military family as a pacifist, Britten adopts a fiercely anti-war stance: yet the opera also envisions life as a battlefield, where death is often the price for the preservation of integrity. Hickox drew us through the resulting complexities with passionate subtlety. Ricocheting brass and clattering timpani delineated both Owen's struggle and the forces of reaction that hem him in, while sensual strings and the sound of Britten's beloved gamelan conveyed the vision of peace that drives Owen on.

Hickox also assembled one of the finest and most consistent casts since the premiere. Peter Coleman-Wright played Owen as a man whose sense of purpose is heightened by each confrontation with his stridently formidable aunt (Elizabeth Connell), his decrepit grandfather (Robin Leggate, giving the best performance of his career) and his scornful fiancee (Pamela Helen Stephen). Alan Opie, meanwhile, was wonderfully subtle as Spencer Coyle, the military crammer, who comes to respect Owen's moral worth, even though he can never share his values. An outstanding evening, every single second of it.