The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - sensuousness, fire and comedy in perfect balance

Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles Mackerras introduced the UK to a then-unknown, even the less familiar operas have had plenty of exposure. Simon Rattle was among the champions, giving an early concert performance (the UK premiere, I think) of the astonishing Osud (Fate). Now he's performing and recording them all with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The Adventures of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century, the full title promising its true wackiness, has had two ENO productions, one at Grange Park Opera and one from Opera North. But never, surely, have its full beauty and pride been so strongly revealed as in this perfectly cast and played concert performance. Without the clutter favoured by David Pountney, Janáček's parody of turn-of-the-century aestheticism on the moon turns out to be graced by music of matchless beauty – in all the best satire, the target needs to be loved by its spoofer – and the boldly-drawn picture of Czech patriotism in Prague in the year 1420 hits all the harder without Robert Carsen's hit-and-miss moving of it into 1968 (Carsen's Woodstock bliss-out for the moon people was hilarious. His Brno production, by the way, currently on OperaVision, also appeared in Berlin with Rattle conducting and much of the same cast as here, though the programme doesn't mention that). Matěj Brouček (“Beetle”), embodied with perfect comic economy of gesture by the marvellous Peter Hoare (pictured above), is a specimen of the late 19th century Czech philistine, a bourgeois drunkard and property owner whose fantasies are not unlike those of Offenbach's Hoffmann, but without the same kind of love interest. As a Hussite fighter tells him in the second excursion, his stomach is his only god and his altar a full barrel. Svatopluk Čech’s novelette places the inn where he downs pints and stuffs himself with sausages in Prague’s castle district (Hradcany) c. 1888. By the time Janacek added to the original moon fantasy the 15th century adventure as the Hussites are about to defeat the betrayer-king Sigismund, national feelings were running high; the glorious advent of Czechia’s first president Eduard Garrigue Masaryk, the greatest before Havel, was just around the corner in 1918.

Janáček's typically eccentric dramaturgy and the fact that all the singers bar the protagonist take up multiple roles cause some difficulties for a first-time audience member, but the only possible weakness is that the moonies' songs, speeches and dances go on a bit too long. It didn't feel that way in Rattle's coaxing of every lovely and unorthodox colour from the London Symphony Orchestra in Acts 1 and 2. Add to that the laser central-European tenor brightness of Aleš Briscein as Brouček's tenant Mazal and the radiance of Lucy Crowe as his girlfriend Málinka (pictured above) – the drink-stupored Brouček conjures them as lunar lovelies – and everyone was smiling through the whole of the first part, which felt like the best of Puccini with sharp jabs every now and then. The radiant curtain in the Prague moonlight by the Vltava – a winning theme in itself – looks forward to the lovers' rapture at the end of Káťa Kabanová's second act; you could have heard a pin drop before rapturous applause. One jaw-dropping big phrase from Gyula Orendt, Part One's Sakristán and Lunobor, set him alongside the three principals and promised well for the first big emotional moment, a real tear-jerker, as the Vision of the Poet (Čech) longs for the return of more heroic times shortly after Brouček has made his way through an underground tunnel back to the 15th century. Great voice, great trumpet-crowned glory from the orchestra.

Equalling it were the patriotic choruses from the men of Nigel Short's Tenebrae: thrilling heroism indeed, and complemented up by the wonderful sound of Bart Van Troyen's bagpipes (pictured below alongside the double basses). Janáček excels himself in blending comedy and conflict, as another lopsided waltz of the kind that populate Part One takes over from the threat of violence and Brouček finds himself, dirty but alive, crawling out of the barrel in which he's spent the night. There were no weaknesses in the large supporting cast, with further outstanding soprano lyricism from Doubravka Novotná and yet more tenor clarity from Stephan Rügamer and Lenard Vrielink. Crowe, transforming into a portmanteau version of the ideal Janáček heroine, managed to pull at the heartstrings as brave Kunka, embodying every emotion with the same kind of economy as Hoare. Ultimately, though, it was this Brouček's night, and Janáček's as embodied in the luminous sounds of the LSO under Rattle. Right now, Janáček earworms have even taken the place of Valkyriemania. Na zdraví, and to what should be a perfect recording too.

• More opera reviews on theartsdesk