Unperformed in the composer's lifetime, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel attained something akin to cult status in the last decades of the 20th century. A study of demonic possession and collective hysteria, the opera hit raw nerves as the Soviet Union began to crumble: there were iconic performances in St Petersburg in 1992 and at Covent Garden a year later. Francesca Zambello's new production for Moscow's Bolshoi Opera, marking the start of the company's first ever London season, reimagines the work as a parable of totalitarian implosion.

Zambello argues that Renata, the opera's self-lacerating heroine, has the passions of an artist, which sets her apart from the "mediocrity, group mentality and oppressive forces" that surround her. Her demons are the apparatchiks of a crushing state system, first seen as projections on the walls of George Tsypin's tenement block set, then gradually assuming a concrete reality as they begin to move against her. In a swerve away from what Prokofiev envisaged, officialdom is swept away in violence, as a police chief is battered to death.

There are some lapses in all this. Zambello is thinking about politics, whereas Prokofiev was more concerned with how religious institutions deem outsiders to be heretical. Her idea that Renata is less insane than the world around her sits uneasily with the grinding derangement of her music, an impression reinforced by Tatiana Smirnova's central performance, gorgeously sung, though with little sense of mania or danger. Alexander Verdnikov's conducting is similarly stronger on the lyricism that characterises Renata's fantasies, than on the nerve-shredding cataclysms that erupt in her wake. Boris Statsenko, however, is superb as Renata's ineffectual would-be saviour Ruprecht, while Roman Muravitsky is wonderfully malign as Agrippa.

· Season continues until August 19. Box office: 020-7304 4000.