Remember the rubber shark in Martin Kušej’s doomed Idomeneo at the Royal Opera in 2014? Its carcass is served up at the wedding breakfast of Figaro and Susanna in Act 3 of the Austrian director’s Nozze di Figaro staging, which premiered at the Salzburg Festival last summer. Mozart and da Ponte’s classic is described in the score as a commedia per musica, albeit one with strong political undercurrents. Well, there’s precious little comedy here, but the shark’s appearance did provide a welcome chuckle.

Not that Kušej cares. At the curtain call of this performance, he faces a barrage of boos but simply smiles and embraces them warmly. He loves nothing more than baiting audiences. Jumping the shark is his bag.

This is a grim, sinister Figaro. Raimund Orfeo Voigt’s sets are stark – bathroom, concrete basement, car park. During the Overture, we see the entire cast seek solace in alcohol or drugs – all except Cherubino, who escapes into a world of writing love poetry. He’s the only character worth caring about.

Count Almaviva is the head of a mafia gang. Figaro is his henchman, while the cleric Don Basilio disposes of the bodies and duffs up Cherubino during ‘Non più andrai’. Rain teems relentlessly against the huge windows in Act 1, against which virgins, who have been raped by the Count, symbolically smear their blood. Antonio is held hostage in a concrete basement, presumably because his gardening skills – as witnessed in the overgrown jungle of Act 4 – are pretty rudimentary. The Act 2 finale sees everyone brandishing firearms at each other; Bartolo’s turns out to be a lighter – another rare Kušej gag.

Are Susanna and Figaro even in love? She certainly seems more drawn to the Count, but their sex is transactional. The revelations about Figaro’s parentage usually provide great hilarity but are played here as drunken larking about in the penthouse bar. The silent disco at the wedding is a neat touch, but Figaro squaring up to his ‘padrone’ and shouting in his face is a misstep. At the end, the Count has Figaro, Susanna, Marcellina, Cherubino and Barbarina blindfolded and is about to execute them when the Countess appears for the denouement.

So there’s little to love in Kušej’s production, but musically there is much to savour. Raphaël Pichon gets the Vienna Philharmonic to sound like a period-instrument outfit – shock, horror! – with sharp, angular playing and lively attack, miles away from their usual silken Mozart style.

Apart from Krzysztof Bączyk’s dull Figaro, the cast is strong. Andrè Schuen’s Almaviva is smoothly sung and coldly calculating – very much the mafia boss you don’t want to disrespect. Adriana González sings the Countess’s two arias gorgeously: ‘Dove sono’ while musing at Gustave Courbet’s intimate L’origine du monde while her double takes a bath. Sabine Devieilhe is the vocally pristine Susanna, although Kušej robs her of some of the character’s spark and charm.

Peter Kálmán’s Bartolo blusters effectively and I liked Serafina Starke’s knowing Barbarina, but it is Lea Desandre’s Cherubino who steals this show. The much in-demand French mezzo is utterly believable as the lovelorn teenager, singing exquisitely, acting terrifically; it’s impossible to draw your eyes – or ears – from her.