A tank's gun barrel looms into view in the first few minutes of Scottish Opera's new production of Judith Weir's first opera, sweeping a porcelain vase to the ground. A Night at the Chinese Opera may be set in 14th-century provincial China when the country was threatened by Kublai Khan, but, as the matter-of-fact blending of historical periods and styles in Lee Blakeley's staging (with designs by Jean-Marc Puissant) implies, repression and brutality have been constants in the country's history. Such concerns, though, are really just a backdrop to Weir's wry, witty and bittersweet drama, with its neat nesting of one story, the Chinese opera performed in the second act, within another, and whose story lines tellingly converge. Though first performed in 1987, this is the work's stage premiere in Weir's native Scotland, and after more than 20 years, it is still the perfect fusion of her text and music that dazzles, with not a gesture wasted.
With Sian Edwards conducting, that deadly clarity is wonderfully conveyed. The Scottish Opera Orchestra shows how precious every note is, and words come across so crisply, the English surtitles are more than usually redundant. But the score's economy creates its own problems for a director. Blakeley's knockabout staging of the Chinese opera is deftly hilarious, with Rebecca de Pont Davies outstanding as the leader of the acting troupe. There are some fine performances elsewhere, too (Philip Salmon's fine turns as the watchman who overlooks the Mongol invasion and as a caricature Italian Marco Polo; Fiona Kimm's cameos as a housekeeper and crone), but the continuity of the outer acts does not always register quite neatly as it should.
· Further performances on Saturday, and May 20 & 22. Box office: 0870 060 6647. Then touring.