The second work in the Polish National Opera's London season was King Roger, Karol Szymanowksi's study of human irrationalism. Temperamentally, Szymanowski resembles DH Lawrence. Whether he knew the latter's work is doubtful, though it is perhaps significant that this was first performed in 1926, the year that saw the publication of The Plumed Serpent.

Both works demand a rejection of Christian values and their replacement with a paganism based on violent, primal emotion. Lawrence brings the old gods back to Mexico. Szymanowski, relocating Euripides's Bacchae to medieval Italy, celebrates the orgiastic rites of Dionysus. Both works also, however, flirt worryingly with concepts of charismatic leader cults. The moral and political danger of manipulating "the masses" is disquietingly neither questioned nor checked throughout the opera.

The opera's previous UK outings have suffered from a sameness of tone. Hearing it done by a company that has been performing it for decades, however, you become aware of every shift of colour, nuance and meaning.

Jacek Kaspszyk's conducting bristles with unusual tension as Roger and Dionysus confront one another. The opera is greatly sung, dominated by Wojtek Drabowicz's Roger, his eyes and voice betraying his uncertainty. Ryszard Minkiewicz's voice of silk and steel swerves between seduction and authoritarianism as Dionysus, while Olga Pasiencznik, as Roger's wife Roxana, responds to the god's powers with a torrent of sexual sound.

Some have griped that the PNO has opted to do the work in concert rather than bring their staging to the UK, but the experience is so intense it doesn't matter, and nothing could be further from the season's lacklustre opening with The Haunted Manor. An unforgettable evening.