Longborough Festival Opera has grand ideas, realised with the launch of a full-scale Ring cycle last year, but its location in the depths of the Cotswold hills makes it a good place to stage Janácek's delightful tale of animals and humans.

Janácek, for whom the countryside of north Moravia was always his spiritual home, takes as his theme the wonderful but unrelenting cycle of life. To symbolise this, director/designer Richard Studer has created a series of undulating terraces on to which are rolled different-sized wheels in the shape of open drums. The smallest become playthings for the youngest animals; the largest ingeniously contains the forester's wife's kitchen, while the tavern habituals must roll their own beer-keg seats on stage.

With no choreography to speak of in an opera that usually relies on it, the play of lighting is emphasised so that the imagery is clear enough: we are but varied cogs in the great machine of life. Studer plays up the essential anthropomorphism and, though the foxes' colour is a bit anaemic, his costumes have plenty of wit. The chickens' breasts are adorned with eggs, their feet are yellow rubber gloves, and Owen Webb's dog has a masochistic restraining harness.

In a strong ensemble, Ella Kirkpatrick's nubile Vixen, Paul Keohone's Forester and Andrew Rees' Schoolmaster are notable, but it is conductor Jonathan Lyness's muscular grasp of the score that makes the evening worthwhile. The luscious sweep of the string writing as well as its charming twitterings and chirrupings are realised with only the merest of suspect moments.

· Longborough Festival Opera continues until July 18. Details: 01451 830292 or lfo.org.uk