The marquee is up, the blancmange and jelly are wobbling and the Suffolk accents have been diligently rehearsed. Glyndebourne's production of Benjamin Britten's May-king opera, Albert Herring, is back almost a quarter of a century after Peter Hall unveiled it in 1985. John Gunter's three iconic sets — the stately and spring-clean interior of Lady Billows's home, the picture-book greengrocer's in the East Anglian shopping street, and the May Day fête — grow better with age. And, again, the audience loves it.

Now revived by James Robert Carson, this production is old enough to have its first Albert Herring, John Graham-Hall, return as a slightly stooped Mr Upfold, the mayor; and its original Sid, Alan Opie, to be reincarnated, horribly reformed, as a bewhiskered and censorious Mr Gedge, the vicar. Both are resonant cameos in the detailed human canvas of this staging. And the new Albert, born once again to tear himself painfully and proudly from the apron strings of his mother (the infallible Frances McCafferty), is the young tenor Allan Clayton, making a memorable Glyndebourne debut.

This is one of the most multidimensional performances of the title role I've seen in some years. Clayton sees Albert's end in his beginning: from the very first moments, humping sacks of turnips into the shop, there are a latent virility and ardour in his voice. It takes only a tot of rum in the lemonade to get him going. And Clayton's minutely expressive tenor is gloriously reborn, as he hails a future in which he will be reselected and resurrected again and again. He looks the part, too: with wide eyes that flash from innocence to blazing experience overnight.

His tempters, Sid (Jared Holt) and Nancy (Louise Poole), are also creatures of flesh and hot blood. Poole, with a voice bloomed like the peaches she sensuously bites, sings a moving aria of remorse as Albert meets his downfall and his uprising. Gérard Korsten, conducting, gives the London Philharmonic Orchestra full rein in the darker colours of the score as they turn and turn again in the final act's always splendidly staged dance of death, and as they spookily re-echo the gossips and the manhunt within Peter Grimes. Each one of those models of moral rectitude is a vivid vignette.

Gwynne Geyer is at times an awkwardly raucous Lady Billows, and Malin Christensson tries a little too hard as Miss Wordsworth; but Susan Gorton is a formidable Florence Pike and Brindley Sherratt an inimitable Superintendent Budd.

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