When it comes to presenting new work, the British opera establishment is notoriously insular. There is a whole generation of European composers whose work is regularly staged across the continent, yet has hardly been seen here at all. One of the most prominent is the 47-year-old German Detlev Glanert; his most recent operas have been widely acclaimed, yet British audiences know little of them.

Almeida Opera set about repairing that omission with a one-off presentation of Glanert's Three Water Plays, an hour-long triptych of three-handers. The pieces are based upon Thornton Wilder's Three Minute Plays, strange little fables about the possibilities of divine intervention and deliverance, in which water plays a major role. Glanert set the first of them, Leviathan, in 1986 and added the others 10 years later. The gap in the chronology is telling: the first is dramatically uncertain and hard to follow, but the later pair has more individuality, especially the last piece, which is witty and drily satirical with a fast-moving score to match.

There was a staging of sorts by Charles Edwards for the hard-working singers (soprano Jane Harrington, tenor John Graham Hall and bass Stephen Richardson), though a straight concert presentation might have been more effective. As usual at the Almeida, the instrumental ensemble (conducted by Richard Bernas) was at the side of the stage, and though the ensemble was tight, it sometimes seemed detached from the singers. You sensed the musical and dramatic worlds of these pieces should be more united than they were here.