Nowadays, Die Entführung aus dem Serail is perhaps the most intractable of Mozart's major operas. For all its psychological acuity, it's hard to escape the fact that, ideologically, it's very much "of its time" and consequently dated or suspect, depending on how you view it.

A critique of Enlightenment values, it peers questioningly at Rousseau-esque ideas of "sensibility", "noble savagery" and the like. A group of Europeans find themselves trapped in the Ottoman empire, perceived throughout as "alien". Class divisions dictate their experiences and responses. The aristocratic lovers, Belmonte and Konstanze, are found morally fallible compared with the Pasha, who wants Konstanze for himself. However, the European servants, Blonde and Pedrillo, outwit their Turkish counterpart, stupid, brutal Osmin. Despite the feminist gloss some have read into it - both Konstanze and Blonde demand sexual autonomy in the face of masculine threats - it's hard not to see Osmin as an inherently racist stereotype.

Elijah Moshinsky's Royal Opera production, dating from 1987, has gained a sharper focus since I last saw it. Where Moshinsky scores high is in his awareness of the Europeans' combination of deceit and disrespect. The extraordinary second act finale - in which the separated Europeans are reunited, only to find their own relationships coming apart - is hauntingly done. Meanwhile, the ending has a very nasty sting in its tail, leaving you wondering whether Konstanze and Belmonte will survive as an item at all.

But Osmin remains a worrying figure. Kurt Rydl, barking his music at times, gives him an extravagant, dangerous vitality, playing the caricature up rather than down, and frequently stealing scenes from Peter Bronder's diminutive, sly Pedrillo and Caroline Stein's aloof yet energetic Blonde. Stein is sumptuously comfortable in the role's stratospheric upper reaches, which is more than can be said for Christine Schäfer's Konstanze. She's fiercely dramatic, but you're often acutely conscious of strain.

The great performance, though, is Kurt Streit's Belmonte. The most handsome of tenors, he has gravitated towards character roles of late. But he has always been a great Mozartian and to hear him flinging out Belmonte's arias with such rapture and accuracy is a privilege as well as a pleasure. In the pit, Charles Mackerras is electric throughout, getting some of the finest playing from the Royal Opera orchestra I've heard in ages.

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