This was a first visit to Garsington Opera’s new home on the Getty Estate on the border of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, now in its third season. Leaving the M40 at Stokenchurch, it was not easy to spot the single track, mile-and-a-half drive leading to the tented surroundings of the demountable opera pavilion. Allowed to alight at the Box Office, we were directed by friendly staff to the lift for disabled access to the auditorium and thence to our seats in an environment remarkably similar to and as draughty as that at the old Garsington Manor, except that here the orchestra is situated Bayreuth-style under the stage. In the extended interval we wined and dined, in the Jamie Oliver restaurant tent, to perfection with efficient and smiling service, guided unhurriedly through a three course meal allowing plenty of time for a comfort stop on the way back to our seats.

Mozart’s Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail was first performed in 1782, the year after Idomeneo but before the Da Ponte operas, Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito. The story concerns an extremely rich and powerful individual Selim who has captured and wishes to marry Konstanza with her maid Blonde. Konstanza’s lover Belmonte comes in search of her. Pedrillo, Belmonte’s servant, also in captivity and in love with Blonde, persuades Selim to let Belmonte into his residence on the pretext that he can assist with Selim’s latest project, against the objections of Osmin, overseer of the estate, who covets Blonde. The lovers are reunited but their escape is foiled and they are threatened with death until Selim relents in order to prove himself more magnanimous than his old enemy Belmonte’s father. The characters are all prototypes of those in later Mozart operas: most closely, Blonde anticipates Susanna, Pedrillo contains elements of Figaro, Papageno and Leporello, and Osmin resembles Monastotos; less closely Belmonte and Konstanza are prototypes of Tamino and Pamina, while more remotely, Selim has aspects of Sarastro and the Commendatore.

In Mozart’s original version set in the seventeenth century, Selim is a Turkish Pasha with an interest in building, Belmonte a Spanish nobleman who is introduced as a talented architect and Osmin heads the Janissaries. In Daniel Slater’s brilliant twenty-first century version for Garsington, Selim is a Russian oligarch whose passion is a newly acquired football team, and Belmonte is son of an American newspaper proprietor, introduced as a football manager. Pedrillo is a newspaper correspondent and Osmin heads Selim’s bodyguard. It is a translation which fits extremely closely and avoids the pitfalls of today’s political and religious sensitivities! The very ingenious set design by Francis O’Connor depicts three floors of the mansion indicated above lift doors at the back as, respectively, a basement kitchen where Swedish sockertorte is baked, a bar and living area, and a penthouse beauty salon.

From the first alla Turca notes of the overture we realised we were in safe hands of the conductor William Lacey and that, should our worst fears about the production be realised, we could just close our eyes. But that this would not be necessary was proved by the opening knock-about comedy which saw Belmonte (Norman Reinhard) and Pedrillo’s (Mark Wilde) access to the mansion blocked by Osmin (Matthew Rose) and the black-suited armed bodyguard. Konstanza (Rebecca Nelsen), having exploited her situation to go on a shopping spree, arrives in a real limousine with Selim, flaunting a set of elegant gowns. Her opening aria reveals an equally elegant pure soprano voice, maintained throughout the opera. It is all the more unfortunate that the impact of her great Act III aria Martern aller Arten is interrupted by much stage business. Blonde (Susanna Andersson) appears, wearing long legs and mini-shorts, to lead the buffo trio with Osmin and Pedrillo. Vocally well-matched, with perfect comic timing, they carry the action forward. Andersson, too, has a fine lyric soprano voice, though with an occasional shrill edge; she is a great performer and won the hearts of many in the audience.

The arias are sung in the original German with surtitles, but the spoken dialogue is a Babel of languages mixing those of the original characters, those of this production, and those of the singers themselves without surtitles – all in all not too difficult to follow even for those with only tourist language.

This production of Die Entführung was a perfect summer’s evening light musical entertainment, while not shirking the serious issues under the surface. It revealed for me two new insights into the work – that it could be successfully transported in time and place and that it contained in embryo so many of the characters of Mozart’s more profound operas which followed.