Bollywood has hit Bryanston; and the yeomen of Dorset don't know quite what to make of it. Curtain-up in the Coade Theatre of Bryanston School dazzled the eyes with a Sri Lankan fishing festival a-flutter with orange, lemon, magenta and heliotrope silks and sequins, flashing lightbulbs and a wild swirling of arms and legs, in the first of the evening's lavish all-singing, all-dancing set-pieces. Bizet's The Pearl Fishers has been referred to as a Norma with palm trees; but in Cordelia Chisholm's shamelessly vulgar design for William Relton's production, the trees twinkled too, and even the sacred temple pulsated with pink light.

Dorset Opera is addicted to challenge. Each year an opera is staged within just two weeks, with a stage crew and a chorus of amateur singers who have been coached at the fortnight's summer school. The principals and orchestra are professional. This year Relton, directing, and Jason Pennycooke, choreographing, moved a vast chorus around a tiny stage to powerful effect. Just as Jeremy Carnall, conducting, stirred his players to relish every ratcheting of tension within Bizet's score, so, in the great storm finale of Act II, the crowd rose and fell like waves.

The tale is the one of the priestess who breaks her vows of love, and of the two men who worship her. The four weekend shows were double-cast: I saw the soprano Marie Vassiliou give her all as Leila, first appearing behind aquamarine gauze as a silent lady from the sea, then singing in hot flesh and blood. Bizet's musical exotica flowered from beautifully placed trilling ornaments both in her hymn to Brahma and in her nostalgic Comme d'autrefois.

Leonardo Capalbo looked and sounded the part as the tenor Nadir, firmly etching each impassioned line, though consonants were not his thing, alas, and the surtitles distracted us from his seductive stage presence once too often. Words were powerfully projected by Simon Thorpe, a Tasmanian baritone of broad vocal and expressive range who totally inhabited the part of poor spurned Zurga. Bernard Deletre's High Priest Nourabad created a rhythmically potent and vividly focused cameo.

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