Albert Herring, Glyndebourne, East Sussex

Lady Billows, one imagines, would have loved Glyndebourne but loathed Britten. How well he knew her; how well he knew all his characters, especially those most likely to brand him a very queer fish indeed.

If ever an opera – indeed a character – embodies the spirit of Britten at odds with the English establishment, biting, if you like, the hand that fed him, it is Albert Herring. When Lady Billows speaks the name "Herring" she does so with the distaste of one whose olfactory senses have just picked up the scent of said fish immediately beneath her regal nose. It's one of many precious moments for Felicity Lott, making her role debut in this glorious revival of Sir Peter Hall's immaculate production, first seen in the old Glyndebourne house.

It struck me then, and it still does, that Lady Billows's reception room bore more than a passing resemblance to Glyndebourne's celebrated organ room. Hall and his designer, John Gunter, have even taken the weather on board. When it looks certain that all hope of finding a suitable young lady to bear the title "May Queen" (a not-so-private joke on Britten's part, for it undoubtedly took one to know one) the gloom descends. Underscoring the immortal words – "country virgins, if there be such, think too little and see too much" – the string basses and timpani of Britten's masterfully deployed chamber ensemble shudder in disgust and the rain tips down.

It's fine detail such as this – as real as Hall and Gunter can make it – that so richly complements the inspired fussiness of Britten's score and Eric Crozier's libretto. Britten's fastidious orchestration is its own gallery of characters, a hive of industry, underlining, mimicking, mocking, reflecting on every tiny turn of event.

Glyndebourne's new music director, Vladimir Jurowski, in an interesting choice for his house debut, revelled in the work's explicitness, drawing suitably ear-tickling characterisation from his London Philharmonic soloists. It bodes well for his future in East Sussex.

Casting is everything in this loveable piece. The voice types have been carefully selected to sound as Britten hoped they would look, and to look as they should sound. Hall has assembled precisely the right voices in the right bodies. With her big hair and bigger hats (her May Day creation crowned with an astonished-looking dove), Felicity Lott's Lady Billows has the height literally to breathe a more rarefied air than her underlings. Her features are fixed in anticipation of the next bad smell, and the dutiful smile is somehow an affront to her nature. Vocally, she surprises with the imperiousness of her chest register.

At the other end of the vocal extreme is Susan Gritton's birdlike headteacher, Miss Wordsworth, all trills and frills, flapping nervously in a constant state of deference. Robert Poulton's vicar strives to redefine obsequiousness, Peter Hoare's mayor has grown used to being heard at council meetings, and for Michael Druiett's police superintendent the authority is all in the handlebar moustache.

Lady Billows's entourage (and it is marvellous how Hall has them moving as one like a small tornado) is completed by her housekeeper, Florence Pike (Diana Montague), who precedes her like the harbinger of bad news. This is ensemble playing of a very high order.

Over at the Herrings' "high quality" greengrocer's shop, created in loving detail by Gunter, the talk is of ripe peaches. Sid (the ever excellent Christopher Maltman) and Nancy (Malena Ernman) are all sexual innuendo and liberation.

Then, of course, there's Albert himself, yet another of Britten's alter egos. And if I have any criticism of the evening at all, I did wonder whether Hall could not have made more of the ambiguity in Albert's "coming out". Alfred Boe gives a smashing performance, beautifully sung, but as he pulls a frilly underskirt from his coat in the aftermath of his life-changing night on the tiles, I did wonder if the nature and gender of the garment might have been left to our imagination.

Last performance 25 Aug (01273 813813; www.glyndebourne.com)