It’s Salzburg, so it must be Mozart. No other place in the world – not even Bayreuth – has cashed in on a musical legacy as successfully as this pretty provincial city. And why not? There are few composers to rival Mozart. But what Salzburg has taken from his legacy, it hasn’t always given back. Over the past 20 years Salzburg became the place where you didn’t go to hear Mozart.

That applied to Così fan tutte more than any of his other masterworks. After the celebrated Karl Böhm/Giorgio Strehler production of the 1970s and the equally memorable Riccardo Muti/Michael Hampe version of the 1980s, the summer festival served up a succession of trashy shows that profited no one. And its umbilical cord to the Vienna Philharmonic, the world’s most reactionary orchestra, has hardly kept it in the vanguard of Mozart interpretation.

Now comes a staging that, though far from perfect, brings Così back into the reckoning as a Salzburg speciality. It marks the culmination of a Da Ponte trilogy directed in consecutive years by Claus Guth, and it is easily the most impressive of the three. Guth’s achievement – and that of his designers Christian Schmidt (décor) and Anna Sofie Tuma (costumes) – is to lend Mozart’s “school for lovers” a contemporary sheen without stretching credibility or denying the opera’s inner logic.

The setting is an exclusive metropolitan designer pad on three levels. No trace of Naples, not a glimmer of sun, not much furniture: what we see is a minimalist paradise in white, profiling the girls’ summer fashions and video clips of their romantic illusions.

A party is under way as the curtain rises, populated by wine-swigging brokers and their affluent friends. Don Alfonso is a role model: retired at 40. But he is also Mephisto – a Nick Shadow who haunts every scene, treating the four lovers like marionettes (clever use of frieze and vocal mimicry) and executing choreographic twirls somewhere between Fred Astaire and John Travolta.

It is a risky interpretation – there is no disguise for the “Albanians” or for Despina’s ruses – but its ironic tone keeps the entertainment quotient high. It also breathes a metaphysical air in tune with this year’s festival theme “The Game of the Mighty”, especially in Bo Skovhus’s impersonation of Mozart’s most devilish manipulator. Scarcely less impressive is Patricia Petibon’s Despina – a red-headed rock chick, all falsetto flurries and improvisatory embellishments.

With the darkening of mood in the second half, the performance starts to mark time. The back of the set opens to reveal a forest, part of which has already invaded the lovers’ penthouse – but its symbolic representation of suppressed animal desire hangs heavy.

Arias and duets are included that with good reason are customarily dropped. Vocal inadequacies start to show. Topi Lehtipuu’s Ferrando tends to bleat, Florian Boesch’s Guglielmo makes little of “Donne mie”, Isabel Leonard’s Dorabella is bland: this is hardly a top-flight Salzburg cast. And while Adam Fischer keeps the Vienna Philharmonic on a tight leash, he finds nothing strikingly dramatic or original to say.

Fiordiligi’s “Per pietà” stops the rot. Miah Persson sings it quietly, at a much slower tempo than usual, thereby summoning the emotional clout the performance had been missing. And with the final ensemble – a deftly crafted maelstrom of confused loyalties – Guth’s 21st-century rebranding of Così captures its moral as powerfully as any traditional production: love is blind, cruel and infinitely complicated. ★★★★☆