Richard Jones relocates the action of Verdi’s Falstaff, in this case to 1940s Windsor. We begin inside a mock-Tudor inn but Ultz’s period sets then show us first the exterior of a wartime semi and later the interior, where the Fords’ chintzy décor and “modern” gramophone form the backdrop to the diversions of the MerryWives.

The 1940s setting is apt: bored womenfolk, their husbands off at war, made hay while digging for victory. Alice Ford’s husband is still at home but the point holds. Nannetta has certainly found herself a dashing GI.

In the third act we’re in a Windsor street, peopled by Eton schoolboys and more common folk. Shops advertising “bridal wear” and “jokes” point to the dual themes of Verdi’s romantic comedy. Jones also finds a neat visual equivalent, in the intrusions of a strapping crew of oarsmen, for the hyper-activity of the score.

The visual gag of a cat reappearing in each act serves to remind us, too, of Verdi’s late interest in the Wagnerian technique of leitmotif.        

This Falstaff is a portly gentleman but not excessively so. He’s vain, delusional and irascible but human, too. Christopher Purves captures his ordinariness rather than his outsize quality, making him more interesting as a result.  

Meg Page and Alice Ford are decently taken by Jennifer Holloway and Dina Kuznetsova, while Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s uniformed Mistress Quickly has a suitably formidable lower register.

Vladimir Jurowski keeps the action moving briskly but finds time in the last act to revel in the romantic music of Fenton and Nannetta (affectingly sung by Adriana Kucerova and Bülent Bezduüz) and the fairy enchantment, even when the latter is given a sinister twist.

Performances to 11 July
(www.glyndebourne.com).