Garsington Opera’s innovative production of Haydn’s Creation was in one sense a bold new departure for the company and, in another, a welcome return to an old friend.

The fusion of oratorio and dance that it presented was, in my experience, an artistic challenge of a sort previously unattempted, though whether to any serious purpose we shall consider presently.

It was certainly good to see Haydn on the Garsington programme once again. His operas were a favourite of the company founder Leonard Ingrams and figured prominently in the repertoire in the early years.

None has been seen, however, since the 2000 production Il Mondo della Luna, reviving a work first given by Garsington in 1991.

Presented over four nights in the lovely opera pavilion at Wormsley, the production of The Creation was certainly conceived on a lavish scale.

The conductor Douglas Boyd had firm charge of an orchestra made up of 43 players and the chorus of singers numbered 37, with a quartet of superb soloists in soprano Sarah Tynan, tenor James Gilchrist, bass-baritone Neil Davies and mezzo-soprano Katherine Aitken.

These were ranged across the stage behind designer Pablo Bronstein’s set composed of a series of gothic arches which, when lit from the rear (lighting designer Mark Henderson), created startling shadows among the dancers in the foreground.

There were 18 of these from the senior members of Rambert, with a further 25 taking to the stage for a long section of the first half from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.

The dancers appeared on their own or in groups of various sizes, moving under choreographer Mark Baldwin’s scheme in a way designed to reflect the subject matter of the oratorio.

As times more classical in style than one is used to from Rambert, the dancing was certainly brilliantly managed but seemed, for this member of the audience at least, to be something of a distraction.

The most affecting moments came, I felt, in passages when the stage was bare, which rather called into question the wisdom of the whole enterprise.

Christopher Gray 3/5