Brief encounter

Glyndebourne’s last offering this season is one of the most stylish things it has done for a very long time, Ravel’s two brief operas directed by Laurent Pelly, who was responsible for its brilliant Hänsel und Gretel in 2008. It may seem odd that Ravel’s pair — though they were conceived quite separately, and years apart — don’t get done more often, but they both demand elaborate sets, and would just be boring if not unintelligible without them.

Actually, I find L’heure espagnole, first performed in 1911, boring anyway, but that seems to be a minority view. The plot — a venerable one of an unsatisfied wife who looks forward to Thursday afternoons when her husband tends the town clocks and she is free to entertain lovers, but they turn out to be tiresome and incapable, while the silent muleteer fills the bill perfectly — is meant, in the text of Franc-Nohain, and the lubricious music of Ravel, to be good, fairly dirty fun.