The terrible twins, Cav and Pag, have rarely seemed so oddly mismatched as in Richard Jones's new English National Opera staging of the verismo double bill. A weird extra curtain call after the interval for Cav (which is staged before the interval) perhaps implies that we are to regard both as plays within plays put on by the same travelling actors. But in atmosphere and impact, Jones's two conceptions could hardly be more at variance.

I enjoyed his black-humoured, Ortonesque romp through Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Wittily updated (in Lee Hall's English adaptation) to a provincial British theatre in the 1970s, it presents the touring stars of a TV sitcom playing out their own seething passions in an ingenious set (by Ultz) that allows us to see not only the actors going slowly haywire, but also the reactions of the doting, then horrified, audience. Imagine Michael Frayn's Noises Off reinterpreted by Quentin Tarantino.

On the other hand, I could hardly wait to escape from Jones's claustrophobic, turgid and visually depressing take on Cavalleria Rusticana. Ignoring all the lush, expansive moods of Mascagni's ultra-Romantic score - music (and a story) that cries out for an ancient piazza, church, tolling bell, villagers hurrying to Mass, and Mediterranean sunshine - Jones crams everything, even the Easter Hymn and procession, into a grim village hall populated by what seem to be quasi-zombies in the dead of night.

The point, I suppose, is to emphasise the fetid intrusiveness of Sicilian life, with an inevitably bloody denouement straight out of The Godfather. But the characters (and particularly the guilt-racked Santuzza) don't make sense if the Italianate context and overt Catholicism are stripped away. And I'm not sure how the drama is enhanced by giving Peter Auty's alcoholic Turiddu an ever-present brother with cerebral palsy (played by an actor, Robert Ewens, with the same disability).

Still, it's good to hear ENO's orchestra performing Italian music sumptuously under Edward Gardner's direction (a lugubrious Easter Hymn is his only miscalculation). There's good singing, too. Cav is dominated by the massive soprano of Jane Dutton's Santuzza, obsessively fiddling with her frock as she anguishes over her pregnancy shame. Pag is more of an ensemble effort. Geraint Dodd's heartbroken Kenny (Canio), Christopher Purves's slimy Tony, Mary Plazas's pert, two-timing Nelly, and her brawny bit of rough, Mark Stone's Woody: they all contribute to this wry slice of showbiz at its sleaziest.

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