Richard Jones's compelling production of Lulu, the first ever at English National Opera, presents a drama within a drama. The Prologue to Berg's score, in which an animal tamer introduces the characters to the audience, is turned on its head.
Instead he welcomes the opera's protagonists, who perform in his tawdry clip-joint. At the final curtain the impresario returns to reveal that the knife with which Jack the Ripper has just dispatched the heroine is a trick one - no one has really died.
That doesn't so much deprive the piece of its visceral force as retrospectively distance us from its squalor and horror. For all but those opening and closing moments the action is vivid and immediate, with the surreal, almost farcical elements of the intricate story treated in faithful detail.
Paul Steinberg's fine-looking sets and Buki Shiff's eye-catching costumes commute backwards and forwards through the fads and fashions of the 20th century, emphasising the timelessness of the opera's themes.
At the centre of it all is the portrayal of Lulu herself. Lisa Saffer's performance is wonderfully protean, neither the explicit predator of Covent Garden's old production, nor the neutral tabula rasa of Glyndebourne's. She faithfully assumes the image that her sequence of lovers and admirers expect of her, changing into a baby-doll nightdress and sucking a lollipop when the mysterious tramp Schigolch first appears, donning a soignée two-piece to greet Dr Schön. It is a progression that ends in her prostitution, walking the streets in fishnet stockings.
Saffer manages all these transformations effortlessly, just as she gets around Berg's stratospheric vocal writing with astounding accuracy and ease. It is a truly outstanding performance, but standards are high all round.
John Graham Hall's raffish Alwa is one of the best things he has done; Robert Poulton's Acrobat and Animal Tamer are brilliantly focused studies in seediness; Rebecca du Pont Davies's blazered Schoolboy is suitably adoring; Susan Parry's Countess Geschwitz is stoical and faithful, and Richard Coxon makes much more than usual of the role of the Painter.
Only Gwynne Howell's beautifully sung but understated Schigolch and Robert Hayward's excessively pitchless Schön are disappointing.
The words in Richard Stokes's unfussy translation come across remarkably - a tribute both to the cast and to Paul Daniel's conducting. He unravels the instrumental detail with wonderful clarity, aided by first-rate orchestral playing.
There are a few moments when a touch more expansiveness would push the emotional envelope further, but that will surely come as this triumphant new production beds down.
· In rep until May 30. Box office: 020-7632 8300.
