Carmen, Opera House, Glyndebourne

When Carmen gets low down and dirty

The scrag end of Seville. Industrial iron work, crumbling stone; grimy, cramped, overpopulated; soldiers and cigarette girls in close, combustible proximity. Heat, dust, sweat and sex. It's Carmen's world. Director David McVicar and set-designer Michael Vale plunge us right into the thick of it. It's hard to move, it's hard to breathe, it's rowdy and claustrophobic. Low down and dirty. But the orchestra, under the sensational direction of Philippe Jordan, splashes on the colour: the festive Spain of picture postcards; premonitions of the "Toreador Song", the bullfight, glamour, blood and sand. What more do you want from Bizet's Carmen?

The femme fatale herself, of course. For more than a year now, we've been weighing up the prospect of Anne Sofie von Otter in the role. A more unlikely casting prospect would be hard to imagine. Physically and temperamentally quite wrong, you would think. But opera is theatre and theatre is illusion, and a performer as clever as von Otter is always likely to surprise. And she does. At the heart of it is language – physical and vocal. The red hair spells trouble, the stance is defiant, the manner skittish. Here is a woman whose defence is her outrageousness, a woman who beats out the castanet rhythms on her bare flesh. Her every move is a cynical come-on.

Now, it's true that von Otter's body language, as yet, betrays a certain contrivance. Verbally, however, she delivers an astonishingly convincing performance. I don't think I've ever heard a non-native French-speaker play the dialogue this idiomatically. Actually, it's a particularly strong feature of the show in general. Whether conversational, low-key or highly charged, it's real – and it's the essence of the drama, not a separate event.

So von Otter has more than a brave crack at the role. She slightly overestimates the intimacy of the house in her earlier numbers. By playing on their semi-spoken, semi-crooned chanson-like character, she's inclined not to give them enough voice. But the mix of colours – the breathy enticements, the teasing slides and impertinent nasal sneers, the rasping chest voice – are all there. And, my goodness, she uses the words. It all just needs to marinate, to become second nature.

Marcus Haddock's Don José is already that, though – a knock-out performance. Haddock shows us a fundamentally weak man in the grip of a passion he cannot understand, let alone control. The voice is as virile and as secure as they come, but the underlying tenderness is always there, as well. Don Josés are so rarely believable, but this one is, completely so. His final scene is genuinely pathetic, a broken man looking for a way out. Could it be that Carmen has found hers in the figure of Escamillo – a quietly confident performance from Laurent Naouri, who treats the "Toreador Song" as both a demonstration and resounding endorsement of his skills in the bullring?

As ever, the hapless Micaëla – touchingly played here by Lisa Milne – is the love and devotion that Don José forsakes for passion. Milne continues to fill out as an artist. Vocally, too, her poignant act three "Romance" turned out to be most accomplished, with difficulties such as the treacherous high B beautifully contained within the phrasing. The image of her during the limpid, flute-led prelude to the act, as a lonely figure in a misty open space, was a memorable McVicar touch, and a striking contrast to the noisy, crowded and over-populated first two acts. It's the freedom, if you like, that Carmen herself so craves.

The strength of this show lies in its atmosphere and bustling narrative detail. Every member of the ensemble enlivens the on-stage community. The excitement – and there's plenty of it, too – comes from their collective energy and that of their remarkable young conductor, Philippe Jordan, who fires the London Philharmonic up into the kind of visceral Carmen we so rarely hear in the theatre. What a talent he is.

To 24 Aug (01273 813813)