Glyndebourne’s first production of Handel’s oratorio juxtaposes the elaborate decadence of the Israelites’ celebratory banquet - with tables overloaded with fruit and flowers as if the set was dressed by Peter Greenaway - against the bleeding, battered, silently staggering figure of David and the decapitated head of the giant Goliath.

Hailed as a “godlike youth,” Iestyn Davies’s David is remarkably passive, borne along by the Chorus.

Christopher Purves is outstanding as Saul, descending from jealousy into confusion, rage and madness – reflected in designer Katrin Lea Tag’s staging of the second act as a black-and-white psychodrama with flickering candles snuffed out to presage the battlefield annihilation.

Director Barrie Kosky depicts a grotesque, Freudian encounter with the lactating Witch Of Endor in which Saul seems to birth the witch and the spirit of the prophet Samuel from his own subconscious.

Despite the pious lyrics of narrator Abner (Benjamin Hulett), he is a ruff-wearing faerie fool character, clawing with elongated fingernails and striding through the black sand of the set on large hobbit feet.

The music shines through this compelling production, with conductor Ivor Bolton sensitively leading the Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment and the magnificent Glyndebourne Chorus to drive the action forward inexorably.

Four stars