Così fan tutte, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne<br></br>The Makropulos Case, English National Opera, London

Youth's a stuff will not endure

Dressed in shades of sand and stone by Vicki Mortimer, and bathed in summer light by Paule Constable, Hytner's period production marries elegance, farce, and psychological acuity. The four lovers, Fiordiligi (Miah Persson), Dorabella (Anke Vondung), Ferrando (Topi Lehtipuu), and Guglielmo (Luca Pisaroni), have been cast so that every line of the ensembles is exquisitely balanced, and so that the simmering sexual attraction on which the plot depends is entirely believable. Their tutors, Don Alfonso (Nicolas Rivenq), and Despina (Ainhoa Garmendia), who is both accomplice and victim, are similarly lithe of body and voice, and not, as is common, played as party pieces for veteran performers.

The swaggering physical comedy of the seductions - which, like the Albanian disguises, owes much to Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow - is beautifully realised, the anguish that accompanies each man's small successes with the other's fiancée is sharp. Unlike many directors, Hytner knows that the secret to sexual triumph is in risking ridicule. Most admirably, the suitors' disappointment is signalled early - not least by the violas of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, who, under Iván Fischer, insist that this game will end badly, while the instruments around them collude in the deception.

I can't pretend that Hytner has resolved all the contradictions in this opera. Who is Don Alfonso? Why does he have such influence? How seriously should we, and the characters who sing it, take the breezy philosophical motto of the final chorus? What he has done, however, is illustrate how deeply disturbing the events of this single, disenchanting day are to every character except Don Alfonso, counter the anachronistic charge of sexism, and underline the naivety of men and women who, like most of us, absolutely mean what they are saying at the time they are saying it.

Fiordiligi and Ferrando, for whom one imagines the sister-hopping Mozart had special sympathy, emerge as as the proto-Tatyana and proto-Lensky: a pairing of sister to suitor that makes more sense than the one that exists. Meanwhile, the chimerical harmonies of the sextets are more effective in their depiction of seizmic insecurity than any Rossini ensemble. The arias are uniformly touching, not least because of the youth of this cast, and, save for some water-logged figures from the bassoons, the playing is strongly characterized, vidily detailed, and delicately coloured.

Memories of John Gummer feeding his daughter Cordelia with a beef-burger sprang unbidden to mind in Christopher Alden's chilly production of The Makropulos Case for English National Opera. Perhaps it was the flourescent strip lighting, perhaps the difficulty of balancing irony and sincerity in a theatre that militates against intimacy, but I left the Coliseum considerably less shaken by Janacek's opera than I was by Mozart's.

The story of 337-year-old Elina Makropulos, guinea-pig for her father's longevity cocktail, is a discomfiting blend of opulent beauty and cold cynicism. The score is as sensous as an odalisque, the libretto as frigid as its seen-it-all heroine. Alden, whose gift is in radicalizing works that have become too familiar, presents a staging that is at odds with Sir Charles Mackerras's rapt reading of the score, leaving its star Cheryl Barker caught awkardly between Expressionism and naturalism. The production as a whole is fascinating but unmoving, with the exception of Graham Clark's charismatic turn as the diva's aging suitor (and the composer's alter-ego) Hauk-Sendorf. It demands to be seen but few, I think, will relish it.

a.picard@independent.co.uk

'Così fan tutte' (01273 813813) to July 10

'The Makropoulos Case' (0870 145 1700) to June 9