Così fan Tutte, English National Opera, London <br></br>Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall, London

Simple, subtle, successful. That'll do

Dreamy, sepia-tinted and surreal. Light, clear and cool. Well-blended, acute and harmonious. English National Opera's new production of Così fan Tutte has this week overturned their reputation for poorly executed and unevenly cast pop-culture Mozart. The most remarkable thing? This time it's the music that one remembers, not the gestures - but more of that later.

Forget grunge. Forget Manga. Forget the high concept white space of Graham Vick's Glyndebourne production or the frippery of Jonathan Miller's Royal Opera House sheikhs. Director Matthew Warchus's subtle and wistful Magritte-meets-Mitford country house Così draws on diverse between-the-wars sources to illuminate the four lovers' metamorphosis from archetypes to individuals. The exact location of this "school for lovers" is deliberately vague: Don Alfonso's panelled study could be the house-master's residence in any home-counties prep school, while Fiordiligi and Dorabella's dark, airless French provincial bedroom unfolds like a Georgia O'Keeffe flower to reveal a soft, sensual, apricot-tinged dream-scape of a garden in Act II. A sexual metaphor? Oh yes, I think so. But like much in this production the suggestion is whispered; a quiet footnote to the main argument.

Because of the beauty of the arias employed in the deceitful seduction of the two sisters and their fiancés' inevitable disillusionment, this opera – surely Mozart's finest – can seem unbearably ironic. How can music of such apparent integrity be the result of a beerish bet on feminine chastity? It follows that there are several ways to play Così – not least because the lovers' tutors Don Alfonso and Despina, while hardly HL Mencken and Dorothy Parker, display very different attitudes to their social experiment. For the Don (an embodiment of the rule that all cynics are disappointed romantics), it's an exercise in cruel satire. For Despina, a broadly comic education in romantic pragmatism. But though each gets their money at the end and both influences are felt through comedy and tragedy, neither is satisfied by the opera's outcome. Resolution is impossible and Warchus leaves the lovers – and audience – unsure of which pairing will survive. But why force a matrimonial double-knot on an opera which is all about the unravelling of partnerships; be they romantic, professional, sororial or fraternal?

Which brings me to the casting and a blend which is unlikely to be bettered at The Coliseum. With a minimal compromise of some arias, ENO have brought together six singers whose voices and styles are complementary enough to suit each variant of duet: Susan Gritton (Fiordiligi), Mary Plazas (Dorabella), Toby Spence (Ferrando), Christopher Maltman (Guglielmo), Janis Kelly (Despina) and Andrew Shore (Don Alfonso). The sound is fresh, immediate and open, and, as ever, casting another soprano as Dorabella (rather than a mezzo) lends light and balance to the quintets and sextets. That said, the characters unfold in specific directions. Free from her sister's lofty moralising and romantic theorising, Dorabella's physicality (always Plazas's strong suit) gets more pronounced. Guglielmo's balletic tension spills into aggression, while Ferrando's foppish boyishness turns into ardent passion. More impressively, these developments are echoed in the singer's tones as Gritton intensifies, Plazas expands, Maltman bites down, and Spence lifts the lid off what is already a gloriously sincere, buoyant voice. Add to this the steady wit of Kelly and Shore and it's a formidable ensemble.

So where's the "but"? I have couple – one over-cooked pun in Jeremy Sams's otherwise deft translation and an oddly timed exit – but they're mere pimples and not the usual ENO "but"s of chorus and orchestra. The former is absent (with minimal damage) and the latter (previously far from Mozartian in sound or attack) has been transformed, which I can only attribute to guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth. To get detail across cleanly in this acoustic is hard enough. To communicate it, warm it, weave it in to the texture, shape the larger arc, make each repeated note add to its predecessor's argument, and colour the whole is as near to ideal as you can get. He's a terrific accompanist too; carefully accommodating dips in register and volume while propelling rhythmic drive. More than that, with the exception of the horn solos in Per pieta (which are admittedly terribly difficult to sustain), Wigglesworth has refined the orchestra's sound beyond recognition: silky, cool and musky strings, heady, defined woodwind and a harpsichord given more prominence and purpose in the mix than at any other time I can recall at this house. Astonishingly aware and exciting conducting and worth the ticket price alone. An altogether wonderful evening.

Unlike Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt's frantically over-interpreted Wigmore Hall recital of Bach, Couperin and Ravel; a concert that had me reaching for the botox in bewilderment at its ecstatic reception. Now I am not opposed to Bach being played on a modern keyboard – Couperin is another matter as his argot is that of a plucked, not percussive, instrument – but I'm simply flabbergasted that one of Bach's English Suites can still be played with clipped resolutions, semi-detached trills, a wash of exogenous dynamics, and in total ignorance of the speed of the dances. The Ravel was only marginally better (no, Angela, I don't think he was joking when he said his music should be played and not interpreted), the Couperin frigid, over-metered, unidiomatic and twee. But with not a single slow-fast French trill to be heard in Bach's own agréments to the Sarabande – mysteriously played in full after both repeats of the undecorated version – and no hint of improvisatory pull in the Allemande, I couldn't say I hadn't been warned. To me, Hewitt's Suite in G minor sounded closer to one of Mozart's lurid quasi-baroque Fantasies than it did to Bach. But that, I suspect, is exactly how her fans like it.

a.picard@independent.co.uk

'Così fan Tutte', English National Opera, London WC2 (020 7632 8300) to 4 July. Live on Radio 3, 29 June