Susan Gritton is a Miss Wordsworth of impeccable credentials (as she herself might say), Robert Lloyd's Superintendant Budd is properly stuffy and outraged, and Felicity Palmer, as the gossip-mongering housekeeper Florence Pike, is as arrogantly arch as possible. Della Jones gets into the character of Albert's hectoring mother with ease and panache. As the sexy Sid and Nancy, Gerald Finley and Ann Taylor are as natural as can be. Steuart Bedford leads the Northern Sinfonia in a clear, clean, brisk, pointed performance. It is utterly lean, which makes the ultra-mock-tragic threnody in the last act all the more outlandish. At Naxos' price, even if you don't know this opera, it's worth looking into. Comedy is a side of Britten that rarely emerged; but when he let it out, it blossomed handsomely.