The untameable shrew

Richard Strauss's rarely staged Die Schweigsame Frau - The Silent Woman - combines all the classic elements of comic opera - duping, false identity, mock tragedy - dressed up in manic and Germanic Gilbert and Sullivan high spirits. A nonsensical story hardly worth retelling, it stars a bumptious English admiral who hates music, his razor-sharp barber and a submissive little wife who turns out to be an untameable shrew (like all women, the libretto none too shyly implies). Strauss has huge fun borrowing various musical styles, from himself and others, and the piece concludes with the self-mocking line, sung by the grumpy admiral Sir Morosus, that music is beautiful - but only when it stops.

It, therefore, makes perfect fodder for Garsington, the country-house opera near Oxford whose neighbours, you may recall, are not famous for their love of music either, and have in the past chosen the festival's first night to practise some synchronised community lawn-mowing. The loudness of Strauss, especially in brittle, comic fullflight as here, must test even the most Joblike of eavesdroppers unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of the fence.

Garsington has a well-established tradition of dusting down Strauss rarities, with conductor Elgar Howarth and director-designer David Fielding an experienced partnership. The 1935 work after Ben Jonson was written in the shadow of the Third Reich and caused a terminal rift between Strauss, a seemingly willing Aryan supporter, and his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig. Fielding has removed historic points of reference and set it on deck - first of a grey battleship, then candy-pink pleasure cruiser - in the 1950s, with a chorus of white-suited sailors who might have stepped in from On The Town.

The young cast tackles Strauss's fiendishly difficult parts with aplomb and occasionally ragged zest. Russell Smythe has crisp energy as the Barber. Christine Buffle (the Silent Woman) and Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as the scheming Henry give spirited performances, both stretched to their vocal limits, but mostly coping impressively. Stephen Richardson makes a nicely lugubrious and growling Admiral. Rebecca de Pont Davies is a treat as the Housekeeper, a batty, scrawny sparrow brandishing her mop in perpetual, ineffectual motion.

Chorus and orchestra, incisively directed by Elgar Howarth, make the most of Strauss's ravishing music and the production has plenty of jokes, with "guest" appearances from Pavarotti and Elton John. Garsington would not be complete without at least one low-flying helicopter overhead, appearing in this case only to be drowned out by the music.

Die Schweigsame Frau