The flames of Hell engulfed the Albert Hall on Saturday, glinting off the brass, and flickering over the organ loft. Don Giovanni tossed a piece of pheasant to Leporello, then threw the scraps to the Prommers. It’s amazing what the presence of television cameras can do.

The fact that a programme of totally disjointed operatic extracts could nonetheless provide an evening of real theatre was a tribute to all the singers involved and, above all, to Mozart the Dramatist whose Prom this was. Even television viewers, though, could perhaps have done without the trite and patronising verbal commentary from the conductor, Roger Norrington.

The sole virtue of these otiose utterances was to set into relief the contrastingly dignified and focused presence of each soloist: of Ian Bostridge, who created a pool of silence around himself as he began Don Ottavio’s Dalla sua pace, exquisitely sung; or of the young soprano Anna Leese, who inhabited every dark second of Giunia’s grief in her aria Fra i pensieri from Lucio Silla. Leese is becoming a formidable Mozartian: her singing here, and as Donna Elvira in that sulphurous finale from Don Giovanni, was full of wonders and keen musical intelligence.

So, what else, and who else? Well, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who played with period-style bite and clarity of phrasing, despite the often lazy pacing of Norrington, raised the curtain with the concluding ballet music from Idomeneo. Mozart wrote it with the virtuoso playing of Mannheim and Paris ringing in his ears — and the SCO’s soloists followed suite.

Simon Keenlyside warmed up his baritone with an aria from the fragmentary Zaide, and then excelled himself as an explosively angry Count from Figaro, his foot pawing the ground, his voice coiled like a spring. His Don Giovanni, too, was horribly gripping, his fierce refusal to repent and his writhing body language carrying him both to Hell, and with both efficiency and elan, back to his soloist’s seat.

The Act II finale from The Abduction from the Seraglio, and the Act III sextet from Figaro shone the spotlight on soprano Rebecca Nash’s high-flying Konstanze and Marcellina, on Ailish Tynan’s feisty Blonde and Susanna, and on Kyle Ketelsen’s resonant and spirited Figaro.