As far as I know, Christopher Warren-Green has no experience in the opera house. But you'd have thought the theater was in his blood from the way he conducted Mozart - who was an operatic creature - with the Charlotte Symphony on Friday.

The simplest way to look at it is this: It's a safe bet that few if any people in the Belk Theater had ever heard the "Requiem" or the "Jupiter" Symphony unfold as speedily as they did this time. I couldn't swear that I had - at least not in the hands of a conventional orchestra rather than one made up of 18th-century specialists. Those groups are often hell-bent about things.

Warren-Green's tempos were fast. The orchestra and Oratorio Singers of Charlotte were by and large able to handle them, though. So the results weren't ultimately about the speed. Instead, the music's vividness and drama rang through it all. Hence the air of the opera house.

Warren-Green's "Jupiter" didn't hurl thunderbolts. Instead, its zip and buoyancy harked back to the playfulness of Mozart's comedies - maybe "The Marriage of Figaro." The flow of the "Andante" brought out the sweetness of its lyricism and the urgency of its moments of unrest.

The famously intricate finale was exuberant, but it was hardly a celebration of contrapuntal clarity. I think the issue was the stage setup that the orchestra has to use when there's a chorus on hand: Something about the orchestra's location makes the sound project less clearly than usual. The finale's bustling action made the fuzziness obvious.

But that wasn't an issue in the "Requiem," which doesn't scramble so. Here again, Warren-Green brought out the music's electricity. So Mozart's Mass for the Dead didn't for a moment seem lugubrious. Instead, the Oratorio Singers and the four soloists came across like the protagonists in a drama.

The Oratorio Singers' fullness, clarity and poise embodied everything that's powerful about precision. The group put over the ferocity of the Judgment Day music; the sighing plaintiveness of the pleas for mercy; the brightness of the hosannas; and the grandeur of the praises of God.

The four soloists - soprano Christina Pier, mezzo-soprano Amanda Crider, tenor Thomas Cooley and baritone Christopheren Nomura - brought out the music's personal side. Cooley's urgent singing made the music's penitence especially telling. Pier brought warmth and sweetness to the fore.

The orchestra, with its string section reduced in numbers, mainly played a supporting role, underlining the lyricism and turbulence. But it also offered some quick, potent scene-setting, from the opening's tenderness to the flames of Judgment Day. And its final chord brought down the curtain powerfully.