Norman Bailey's grubby Schigolch, Donald Maxwell's nerdish Athlete, David Kuebler's desperate Alwa, Wolfgang Schone's helden Dr Schon and Kathryn Harries's sympathetic Geschwitz are all beautifully observed and memorable - within the terms the production sets. Berg's libretto, taken from two plays by Frank Wedekind, is early-20th-century Berlin burlesque: the style that Brecht and Weill perfected, with grotesquely comic-strip delivery Spiced by cabaret sex but fuelled by moral purpose Whatever realism survives, the mix is cruelly heightened. Here at Glyndebourne, though, the characters are guys-next-door (with Jack the Ripper the genial, everyday inhabitant of a Gloucester back street) and there's no sex at all. Geschwitz's lesbian infatuation with Lulu is quite obviously platonic. And the set - which looks like the non-denominational meeting house of a red-brick university: anonymously, inoffensively bland - conveys nothing beyond the vague suggestion (with a concentric circle of floor revolves) that this is a vortex, a Lulu-wake, into which the characters get sucked.

It certainly doesn't serve the text - with the consequence that some of the best jokes are thrown away. In the Feydeau-farce scene where Lulu's many lovers scatter at the arrival of her (third) husband, Geschwitz is meant to hide behind a fire-screen, which is why Dr Schon, discovering her, says: "I suppose you came down the chimney!" When there's no fireplace and she has to hide under the stairs, it isn't funny.But if Vick has failed to deliver the piece, he has at least coaxed some superb individual performances from his cast There's not a weak link. Schafer sang Lulu last year at Salzburg, and she lives up to the reports of a fine, incisive brilliance of sound, with a good top. But in pursuing this big idea of disengagement, Vick has allowed the darkness of the piece to slip through his fingers - literally, in that his lighting is insensitively bright, and figuratively, in that he has diluted the manic, expressionist tone of the piece into late-20th-century ordinariness. But with the London Philharmonic in the pit the stakes are higher and the sound incomparable: tough but loving. With the clarity of Boulez, warmth of Tate and vigour of Dohnanyi, Davis has the unique selling points of all the main interpreters of Lulu and surpasses them in quality I can't believe that anyone alive could do it better. What a pity, then, that the production is so tame, anaesthetised by Graham Vick into something guaranteed not to disturb the appetites of Glyndebourne picnickers en fete In his defence, I understand what he has tried to do.

Andrew Davis, who conducts, has the measure of Berg's complex score (the first ever to sustain serial principles of composition to full-scale operatic length), as we knew from his concert performance with the BBCSO last year. There was a swagger of defiance in the tone, a sense of try-this-one-for- size. And Alban Berg's abrasively seductive opera is undoubtedly a grown- up piece: a staged encyclopaedia of depravity and moral mayhem, and hard music - very different from the corporate-hospitality fare that Glyndebourne used to sell. But then things have changed in the home of country-house opera Berg, Birtwistle, unknown Handel ... it all signifies a quantum leap in seriousness of purpose; and in the case of this new Lulu it has been magnificently vindicated, musically at least. WHEN Glyndebourne first announced a production of Lulu, it was like a small boy telling his parents he had plans to take up smoking.

There will be no mistaking his identity, the books have taught me that much. Our meeting will be heralded by the tell-tale bolt of electricity, the tingling at the top of the spine and the steady blush which will seep involuntarily as our eyes meet.What are a few O-levels compared with the invaluable ability to spot Mr Right?. I do not blame Mills & Boon for my less than superb exam results, nor for the occasional moral lapse dictated by my addiction. On the contrary, I am grateful for the legacy those books have left: I will never settle for second best in a man.I am content in the knowledge that my Rex will show up, his eyes blazing, that single muscle twitching in his steely jaw and his broad shoulders and powerfully defined chest deliciously discernible beneath his taut shirt. We spent the journey drinking in the exotic pictures on the covers before taking it in turns to choose which went home with whom that night. Of course we had our favourite authors, Kate Darcy and the likes, the ones who offered the most plausible plots, the heroines who talked back and those magnificent, brooding Porsche-driving heroes who'd triumphed over the most piteous childhood misfortunes. Meanwhile, my friend relieved the bulging shelves of some of their stock.We escaped with about ten books that day, five each.