What's the best way of getting rid of a rich, aged husband? Well, you could bump him off, but that is likely to attract the attention of the police. It's far better to spend all his money as Norina will tell you.

Egged on by Dr Malatesta, Norina has married wealthy bachelor Don Pasquale, who is many years her senior. A marriage made in heaven? Decidedly not but it's a necessary evil if she is ultimately to win Ernesto, her real love and Pasquale's nephew. In Garsington's stylish new production of Donizetti's opera (designer: Francis O'Connor), Norina proceeds to spend her husband's money in startling and extravagant fashion. The sober brown woodwork inside the Pasquale mansion is done over in the black-edged, red and yellow squares of a Mondrian painting the very latest thing, as the production is set in the 1920s. Even a classical statue in the garden gets a Mondrian makeover (see Weekend cover). The bills pile up, very visibly, on Pasquale's desk.

Does the old boy deserve to be treated like this? Conal Coad's Pasquale is indeed a pompous fool, and he is singularly nasty to nephew Ernesto. Yet Coad does inject several grains of sympathy: how could Pasquale know that his trusted doctor Malatesta is lying through his teeth, pretending that Norina is his "modest sister", when she is in fact extremely worldly-wise?

Majella Cullagh has a whale of a time as Norina, performing her wolf in sheep's clothing act extremely dramatically, as she lifts her voice from the mere whisper of a demure virgin to an instrument of dominating power once she has ensnared Pasquale. Riccardo Novaro gave a memorably comic and assured performance as Papageno in Die Zauberflte at Garsington in 2001, and does so again this year as Dr Malatesta. His facial expressions speak volumes.

Meanwhile, Riccardo Botta's Ernesto is a picture of drunken despair as he contemplates the loss of Norina. Director Daniel Slater, always an expert at supplying plenty of action for his choruses, creates a hilarious opening scene as Ernesto constantly changes tables outside a Parisian caf, annoying several other customers in the process, and pursued by a waiter who is determined to sell him a croissant and get his tip. Botta perhaps overdoes Ernesto's strained misery, or maybe he was nervous on opening night. But this is an excellently sung production, delivered with great panache and humour. It's a credit to the late Leonard Ingrams, who planned it before his untimely death last year.

There are further performances of Don Pasquale on Jine 20, 24, 30, and July 5 and 9. Box office, in case any returns are available: 01865 361636.