Encased in gleaming wood-panelling, designer Allen Moyer's lavishly upholstered saloon car and well-stocked butler's pantry convey the cocooned opulence of 1920s travel. Robinson's choice of era is smart. With tabloids thrilling to stories of white slavery, Irving Berlin's "Lock Me in Your Harem and Throw Away the Key" a speakeasy standard, and Guerlain kissing the necks of his customers with Shalimar, Orientalism was all the rage: mysterious, fantastic, dangerous. After recent attempts to rewrite Mozart's rescue comedy as a post-9/11 polemic, it's a relief to see a production that embraces innocence: from the tender fidelity of Konstanze (Lisette Oropesa), the hapless heroism of Belmonte (Robin Tritschler), the saucy modernity of Blonde (Claire Ormshaw), the bemusement of Osmin (Petros Magoulas) and the wise-cracking, Turk-baiting loyalty of Pedrillo (Wynne Evans), to the energy, exoticism and trembling, first-love seriousness of the score.

Rinaldo Alessandrini's pitch-perfect reading of the score incorporates all the zip and piquant articulation you would expect from period performance while clearing space for the unhurried lyricism of Belmonte and Konstanze's laments and some enchanting obbligato solos from the orchestra.

Tritschler's naturally high, understated Irish tenor is sinuous and sweet, while Oropesa's ardent, dewy soprano makes "Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose" the high point of the work and delivers "Marten aller Arten" with ease while being showered with furs, silks, jewels and shoes (shoes!) by Simon Thorpe's dry sophisticate of a Pasha. The mutual cultural bafflement between Blonde and Osmin is deftly handled, while Evans's German ad libbing and wry, stylish reading of "In Mohrenland gefangen war" (with his master's ukulele) is simply faultless.