Two problems that plague almost all current productions of Mozart are those of directorial adaptation and period performance practice. This May, director Calixto Bieito – whose vision for practically every opera includes explicit references to rape and drugs – made Mozart’s “Abduction from the Seraglio” his latest victim. Rene Jacobs’s recent recordings, first of “Cosi,” and, this year, of “Le Nozze di Figaro,” have been shocking in a different way: with chee tah-quick tempi, extreme if not exorbitant ornamentation, and an often visceral approach to rhythm.

The production of Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” at the Mostly Mozart Festival that premiered on Tuesday evening represents a successful middle ground. Sir Jonathan Miller’s production, which was seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last season, succeeds in giving us a world of Samsung, Starbucks, and Hugo Boss, without at all interfering with the core of Mozart’s music. Perhaps it’s these summer months, and our specific geographical location, but the whole production – one giant, bleached-out, postmodern interior – smacked of a Hamptons dinner party.

The sextet of singers did fine, and some did much more than that. Susan Gritton’s Fiordiligi contained vulnerability and outrage, all in a warm, generous cloak of sound. While her two unwieldy and glorious arias, with their notoriously unfriendly sonic leaps, spotlighted a lack of depth in her low range, her ardency and innate musicality more than made up for it. Krisztina Szabo was convincing as her more fickle sister, Dorabella. But Lillian Watson’s Despina, while accomplished, was underdone: Mozart’s direction to “sing through the nose” was only nominally applied. She could have gone crazy, but seemed to feel uncomfortable abandoning her bel canto background.

Nathan Gunn as Guglielmo stood out among the men for his lively demeanor and stylish phrasing. Gordon Gietz’s Ferrando mixed ardency with a tendency to be below pitch, and Don Alfonso, the jaded pop-philosopher, had an amusing and commanding advocate in Andrew Shore. All the singers followed Mr. Miller’s directions, which included some inventive groping, as well as more traditional blocking and gestures.

The chamber orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, the pit band for Tuesday’s performance, uses modern instruments while trying to incorporate a historically informed style. It thus sounds more ordinary than provocative. Much of the evening came off emotionally timid; the recitatives were absurdly dull. But the orchestra was able to conjure magical, vibratoless blankets of sound, and, under the direction of Bernard Labadie, they played with exceptional technical prowess – a perfect aural equivalent to the gentle winds and calm waves that appear more than once in the libretto.

A performance of “Cosi” succeeds if the tale of disguise-and-switch seduction contains equal amounts of farce and pathos. So it is always interesting to watch an audience transform from laughing off the idiotic, unbelievable plot, to trembling before what may be Mozart’s most elegant, even sublime, operatic score.

And this is where Mr. Miller’s staging really worked wonderously. Yes, there were camera phones, glasses of pinot grigio, and a defibrillator. There were cute exits and entrances not indicated in the libretto. But there were also many instances of genuine poignancy, such as the farewell quintet from Act I. The music achieves here a kind of minimalist and ethereal stasis, and Mr. Miller’s characters responded with suitable restraint and selflessness.

The drab yet acoustically serviceable confines of La Guardia High School served to underscore the message – exquisite things come in simple, and sometimes strange, packages.