The first thing to say about Jonathan Kent’s new production of The Turn of the Screw is that it isn’t scary. The second thing to say is that this opera probably doesn’t need to be — unlike the Henry James novella on which it is based. In Britten’s world the two ghosts that haunt the Governess and her young charges, Miles and Flora, occupy ambiguous ground. Should she confront them? Does she even need to? In Kent’s mind the battle lines are fuzzy. Kate Royal’s youthful Governess is no Victorian tragedienne, but she and her household come from the cosy world of 1950s domesticity. Here family values take precedence, the friendly housekeeper, Mrs Grose, does the vacuuming, and children are allowed to be children.

But this is also an era in which deviance from the norm was condemned, and adolescence less easy to cope with than either adult respectability or childhood innocence. It’s not clear what era the two ghosts, Peter Quint and Mrs Jessel, come from, but their influence on Miles and Flora clearly flies in the face of the Governess and Mrs Grose’s bourgeois sensibilities.

The predatory and passionate Mrs Jessel threateningly clutches her swollen belly, and Flora’s games gradually shift from playing with her doll to feigning pregnancy with it. Kent hints that Miles, meanwhile, is a burgeoning artist, whose ecstatic abandon at the piano shows that Quint’s enchantments do have some positive results, even if the ghost disturbs that most sacred of childhood rituals — bathtime — to preach his subversive message.

Perhaps Kent’s only miscalculation is to be too in thrall to his set designer, Paul Brown. Even while admiring the giant glass screen that flips around Brown’s austere designs to evoke the different locations, you miss that sense of growing claustrophobia infused in one of Britten’s tautest scores.

But there’s enough to seduce the ear. Conducting, Edward Gardner draws some ravishing playing from the Glyndebourne on Tour orchestra — sensual and disturbing, but driven and tense in equal measure. And his cast is without a weak link, starting from Royal’s superb Governess, delivered with rich tone and unfailing humanity.

Rachel Cobb’s fiercely dramatic Mrs Jessel turns a cipher into a real player, while Daniel Norman’s Quint treads a confident line between virility and otherworldiness. Both Joanna Songi’s Flora and Christopher Sladdin’s Miles offer the right mix of seamless vocalism and knowing vulnerability as Flora and Miles. The final message is clear: growing up is a risky business.

Box office: 01273 813813. Then touring