Semi-opera semi-staged was the offering at the Proms last night as Glyndebourne came to town.

Luckily, we were more than semi‑amused. Purcell’s Fairy Queen (nothing to do with Spenser) is of an operatic form that lends itself to extravaganza. The Glorious Revolution types, you see, liked an all-in-one approach to entertainment. So in this piece, they got a tightly abridged, fully acted version of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’sDream, with a great masque of music and dancing stuck on the end of each act.

Last night, the acting was fine. The best work came from time-honoured William Gaunt as Theseus and Desmond Barrit’s ludicrous boyo Bottom. The lovers’ performances were callow and the fairies tried too hard to be mercurial but that’s pretty much par for this play’s course, and in the end we’re here for the music.

The production’s finest asset is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, guided by William Christie. Christie’s reading is sprightly and fun and, above all, theatrical. When those period instruments tremble, they really shudder, when they groan comically, it’s funny: Purcell’s magical instrumentation brought to intelligent, vivid life.

I had reservations about the soloists, most of whom were either objectively bland or just beggared by comparison with Carolyn Sampson. Her singing, pure, caressingly controlled and imbued with constant variety, was the evening’s highbrow highlight. The lowbrow one? Of Jonathan Kent’s direction, little palpable made the Lewes train but the bunny-mascot Kama Sutra was hilarious.
www.bbc.co.uk/proms