On October 21, 23 and 27 (plus a full programme around Britain culminating at Sadlers Wells in December) the company presents Verdi's Macbeth.

This revival of Richard Jones' new production, first staged at Glyndebourne this summer, did not meet with the approval of critics including my knowledgeable Mid Sussex Times colleague Mark Gale.

Mark knows the opera and wondered why it had to be larded with gimmicks.
True, the music can stand alone.

Even I – with a smidgen of his knowledge - could have watched these fine singers deliver their story chorale-style lined up in front of an unpainted backdrop.

But their virtuosity punched through the tricksy sets, bizarre stage accoutrements and frankly chilly costumes to deliver a performance which pinned you to the back of your seat.

The witches dressed in Russian babushka costume, mini-skirts with orange tights and blue body-warmers emerged from a caravan – not a gypsy one, but the sort you get stuck behind on the A303.

At spell-casting time they boiled their obnoxious mixture in an aluminium pan on a white, enamelled, 1960s style double oven.

Instead of wringing her hands to rid them of blood, Lady Macbeth cast off pair after pair of white, cotton gloves and hurled them into a commercial washing machine.

Macduff's soldiers were tattoed and naked to the top of their low-slung kilts – an apocryphal 666 engraved on their shoulders; Banquo's ghost inhabited a self-animated cardboard carton dripping blood; shards of light reflected from a Palais glitterball; there was an acid yellow curtain depicting a smileyface, a breezeblock set and the moving Birnam Wood reincarnated as a fake chainstore Christmas tree.

There were jokes a-plenty – but to me the staging and presentation was appropriate and enabled the ancient tale of blood and revenge to polevault the centuries into the here and now.

Svetlana Sozdataleva as Lady Macbeth made her tour debut following her performance as Lady M's lady in waiting in the summer Festival.

Stephen Gadd – formerly an engineering student at Cambridge but twice a finalist in the Placido Domingo International Singing Competition – also made his debut and sang a thrilling and assured Macbeth.

The principals had strong, clear, faultless and powerful voices interpreting Verdi's demanding score – he described it as 'more difficult than my others' - with pleasing accuracy and authority.

The revival was directed by Geoffrey Dolton and conducted with sensitivity by Robin Ticciati, Glyndebourne on Tour's musical director.
Design is by Ultx and movement by Linda Dobell.

Programme notes tell us the production follows all but one of the revisions Verdi made and adheres to the 1865 edition, except in the finale where it reverts to the 1947 edition with the original battle reinstating Macbeth's death aria.

It is all here- ambition, adoration, terror, pity, spinechilling fear, folie de grandeur and ultimate fatalistic acceptance of the old saw: 'Take what you want, God says, but pay for it.'