Le Nozze di Figaro review ★★★★★, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Cotillions and polkas usually pepper the opera stage when the plot calls for dancing, but in Glyndebourne's Le Nozze di Figaro they are – flip, flip, cross, cross, tap, tap – doing the Macarena.

Velvet waistcoats and psychedelic bell bottoms are the rig of the day, with helpfully disguising floppy hats for the women. Let’s Twist again, like we did in 1786. And all this swinging is happening in Seville: plotting in Moorish courtyards and gardens, listening in from behind arches and pillars and cooling off in tiled walls of burnt orange and peacock blue, in Christopher Oram’s sumptuous set.

The twists and turns of Le Nozze are as nothing, though, to Mozart's endlessly inventive score, which contains some of his greatest ensemble writing, and it is here that the matchless cast at Glyndebourne forsake musical vanity and turn in the sort of teamwork that sportsmen should envy.

The slow-building septet at the end of Act II, one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written for human voice, is both architectural and organic in its unfurling, and here is a line-up to remember:

As the manservant Figaro, fine Italian baritone David Luciano is quick on his feet and a great match for Rosa Feola’s nimble Susanna. His long-lost parents, as revealed in the Act III sextet, are played by Susan Bickley as Marcellina and Italian bass Carlo Lepore as Bartolo. Hungarian-Romanian baritone Gyula Orendt is the frustrated Count, the South African soprano Golda Schultz his neglected Countess, and Alasdair Elliott is the notary Don Curzio, whose brief appearance is rewarded with a delectable musical line.

Together they give a masterclass in listening as well as singing, while Jonathan Cohen, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, teases out the golden threads that run through this complex weave.

Recitatives do not exactly rattle through at the breakneck speed favoured by many interpreters these days, but there are more than enough memorable moments to make up for this slightly sluggish dip in pace: the letter duet for Susannah and the Countess is beautifully balanced, the principals’ arias are spellbinding, and the resolution uplifting.

Grandage is a man of the theatre first and foremost, and this is a satisfyingly theatrical production, with some hugely likeable tricks, but he never lets the business get in the way of the music. Sometimes it’s best to just stand and sing. And then do the Macarena.