We'll give you the ride of your life

Scottish Opera's daring, down-to-earth Walküre achieves the near- impossible - drawing mid-scene applause from Wagnerians

The girl soldiers from the Valhalla National Liberation Army are back from duty. They raid the fridge (it stands midstage) and are getting tight on bottles of beer they have found therein. One of them gets her head stuck under the cold tap to sober her up. All this to Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", played slowly enough for its equestrian spirit to sound a bit inebriated.

It seemed a cheap and cheerful way of doing this admittedly difficult scene. But like many other simplistic notions of director Tim Albery, it worked startlingly well. Indeed, it led to something one never, never hears during Die Walküre, or any other Wagner opera: the audience applauded in the midst of this sacred music. For Wagnerians, this was a moment of shock and secret delight.

You could put it down to the charm and zest of the eight young valkyries, a clamouring, gleaming ensemble of spunky soprano voices. Or maybe to the strong, forceful conducting of Richard Armstrong, the orchestra of Scottish Opera responding with sinewy verve. But ultimately – and in spite of the obvious wrongness of these pretty kids with their cartridge belts and headscarves – to the fact that Albery did not get in the way of the music. Wagner's scores do their own terrible work, and you don't need to treat them with slavish respect or to Mickey-Mouse the action.

Thus, Hildegard Bechtler's designs were functional and timeless. Hunding's hut had sloping walls and big square pillars painted in a grubby white primer, and there were doors all over the place – so many of them that you wondered which one would burst open on the arrival of spring. There was a large sofa that looked like the back seat of a Ford Granada, and the 'holy hearthstone' was a small gas-ring.

The lovers spent most of their time sitting on stacking chairs at a Formica table. Ana Jebens had dressed them plainly, Siegmund in a crumpled suit with a felt hat, Sieglinde in an old pink smock and cardigan. If tragic drama is supposed to be about the inner lives of ordinary people, then boy, were these people ordinary. During the famous cello solo of the awakening of love, Sieglinde just laced up her shoes.

The result was that this miraculous score did its work unimpeded. Jan Kyhle looked mean and sexy as Siegmund, and he did not hector, singing every phrase with lyric purity and a fiery edge, even if he was often two or three cents under pitch. The Sieglinde of Ursula Füri-Bernhard was movingly earnest, with a grimness in the lower register that was truly Wagnerian. Carsten Stabell's Hunding was a genial bully, pleasantly baritonal rather than immense and bestial.

But many of us had come chiefly to hear Elizabeth Byrne as Brünnhilde. In one of those crises that give opera administrators heart attacks, Kathleen Broderick had withdrawn from the role and Byrne had been miraculously conjured up from somewhere. She triumphed. It was not the obvious voice for the part, with its creamy-white, almost Mozartian upper range and its husky middle, but Byrne was able to embody youth, simple daughterly devotion, and she really looked "fair and grave", schön und ernst as Siegmund describes her.

Her agonised dialogue with Wotan was no kind of battle of wills; she pleaded, almost pathetically, and he, quite suddenly - it was an Albery inspiration – crumpled and embraced her. This was not Nilsson, overwhelming the king of gods with swingeing vocal blows, but a dignified and pathetic girl. And this was in spite of the oddly maladjusted Wotan of Matthew Best. The voice was right, with those unfathomed, cavernous depths that bespeak infinite wisdom, but the stage presence was confusing. Hans Hotter and John Tomlinson always looked like gods, but Best looked like a prosperous solicitor.

He mumped around the stage, sulked in chairs and got into childish piques. Announcing that he now desired the end of the world, Das Ende, he just sank on the bed of his faceless hotel room (the Act 2 set stressed faceless modern life; above the room was a raised motorway and broken ferro-concrete pillars).

Best stood no chance at all with the steely Fricka of Anne Mason. She was dressed in a fabulous white model outfit – Wotan's practice was obviously getting the top briefs – and her injured fury was much too realistic for comfort.

Albery and Bechtler constantly produced inspired details. Admittedly, some misfired; the deaths of Siegmund and Hunding were clumsily mismanaged. But the fire around the mountaintop will surprise you – I will not give away this remarkable effect for audiences.

For plenty of people will want to see this fresh, tart Walküre. With all its cheeky cowgirls and untypical voices, its impact was shattering.

There are further performances of 'Die Walküre' at the Festival Theatre (0131-473 2000) on Wednesday and Saturday at 5pm