Toby Wilsher's new production of The Marriage Of Figaro for Palace Opera transfers the setting from pre-revolution Europe to Edwardian England tonight at the Grand Opera House, York.

In this version, the lord of the manor is to be entertained by the local people's staging of The Marriage of Figaro in the garden of his mansion.

Explaining the setting, Wilsher says: "The balmy English summer evening seems the perfect place for Mozart's tale of marital infidelity, the privileges of the noblesse and the anguish of young love. However, as in Mozart's day, dark clouds of social and political upheaval are gathering as the birth pangs of the new era reach throughout Europe to touch those most resistant to change."

Mozart's opera was premiered in Prague and Vienna in 1786 and for all its popularity today, initially not everyone approved of his tale of confounded love, mistaken identities, aristocratic deception and general confusion with conflict as a main theme.

"He portrays conflicts between the classes, professions and the sexes, and in all departments the servants come off best with everybody, particularly the various pairs of lovers, reconciled. So I was most interested in the reaction to both the original play by Beaumarchais and to Mozart's opera. Both were banned by the crowned heads of Europe for dramatising the advance of subversive political ideas - the rising strength of the working classes - and the seemingly innocuous story of Figaro sat uncomfortably in the midst of pre-revolutionary Europe."

It was this reaction that prompted Wilsher to relocate The Marriage of Figaro to another time of conflict: England in the first decade of the 20th century, a period when once more the aristocrats of Europe were threatened with removal from power.

"These years saw a ground-swell of change across Europe, with unionists, artists, revolutionaries and suffragettes forcing new ideas on to an old world. In the meantime, however, the aristocracy of Britain basked unwittingly in their final Indian Summer, waiting to be entertained," he says.

Wilsher did not make the transfer lightly. "There are few operatic works that have had quite so many outings as The Marriage Of Figaro, and as with a director approaching Shakespeare's Hamlet, the question very soon arises: 'What can I do, should I do, that is different?'. In an age where the new and original hold sway, approaching a classic such as this requires much careful thought."

So, what style of production can the Opera House audience expect? A highly visual one, apparently, which no doubt will draw on Wilsher's work with Trestle Theatre Company, whose surreal masked entertainments were once a regular fixture on the York Arts Centre calendar.

Palace Opera, The Marriage Of Figaro, sung in English, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, 15 June at 7.30pm. Tickets: £12 to £16; available on the door or ring 01904 671818.