Monteverdi's version of the Orpheus myth comes with variant endings: one in which the hero is torn apart by Bacchantes; one in which Apollo intervenes in a chariot and all ends happily; and one in which an old man spits on his handkerchief, wipes his face and consoles him with a bar of chocolate.

This latter appears as the final image of Christopher Alden's perverse Opera North production which, instead of showing shepherds dancing in the fields of Thrace, confines the action to what appears to be the day-room of a rehab clinic for drug casualties in fancy dress.

Alden could be excused for having no truck with frolicking nymphs and zephyrs - neither did Monteverdi. Orfeo is arguably the first opera to focus on human fallibility rather than allegorical pantomime. As the composer noted: "Orpheus moves us because he is a man, not a wind."

Yet it is also the first score whose colours evoke the full spectrum of human emotion, though Paul Nilon's Orfeo is slumped in a clinical depression from which he never recovers. He and Euridice undergo their nuptials on the brink of the wrong sort of tears. The fact that the couple are solemnly tethered in masking tape indicates that this is a marriage made in hell - which leaves you at a loss as to why the hero should descend into Hades to retrieve it.

Alden took his bow to vicious boos, suggesting I was not the only one struggling to follow his logic.

· In rep until March 17 (0870 125 1898). Then touring.