Greek was the work that turned 25-year-old Mark-Anthony Turnage into the holy terror of British music when it was first performed in 1988. Relocating the Oedipus myth to London's east end, it formed a squall of protest against the values of Thatcherite Britain, and its in-your-face viscerality cut a swathe through the up-itself opera scene of the day.
Time, however, has altered our response to it. The scatological tone of Steven Berkoff's text no longer shocks, and its linguistic brutality, once so forceful, now seems excessive. More perplexing nowadays is the fact that the opera's depiction of working-class life, as founded on greed, credulity, violence and aimless stupidity, is in effect a bourgeois, deprecating stereotype rather than satire, while the Sphinx's temporarily feminist triumph smacks vaguely of misogyny.
Greek's politics do hit home forcefully, however, in its reminder that little has changed in the intervening period. The "plague" of racism and deprivation that dogs Turnage's Oedipus is still with us. Our response to the opera now is sadness, rather than outrage.
Sadness is very much the dominant tone of Clare Venables's affecting production. Venables is less interested in the work's politics than in its psychology. The tragic power of her staging derives from the conflict between her depiction of the sexual contentment between Eddie and the mother he has inadvertently married, and our knowledge that the relationship must collapse in anguish once the truth is out.
Riccardo Simonetti, louchely handsome, and Louise Mott, very much a tart with a heart, caress each other with the convincing intimacy of lovers who believe that nothing can affect them. When reality dawns, he can't touch her at all. She clings to his legs in desperation.
Elsewhere, Venables combines clarity with garishness. Traffic signs indicate the implacable fate that drives Eddie on. Huge video screens carry images of the race riots that swirl round him. Neon lights suggest London's tawdry allure.
The score remains compelling, a combination of Stravinskyan neoclassical clarity and the jazz-influenced atonality of Berg's Lulu. Diego Masson, conducting the London Sinfonietta fiercely, brings its pungent lyricism and darkness to life. Thesingers - Simonetti, Mott, Richard Chew and Louisa Kennedy-Richardson - are all outstanding. The packed house consisted mostly of teenagers. Whatever one thinks of Greek, it has brought a new audience to opera, for which we must be grateful.
• Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton (023-8059 5151) tonight, then touring to Huddersfield and Cheltenham.
