The tunes are famous thanks to that ad for the world's favourite airline yet the opera is unknown. Once again, pioneering Holland Park has dug out a rarity. If it's not a piece one need hear more than once, and it is not, we are lucky to have had the chance. Tom Hawkes has directed an effective Raj-style staging, complete with brightly coloured saris, temple dancers and Hindu deities in Peter Rice's designs.

Delibes's 1883 exotic fantasy takes as its starting point religious oppression in Imperial India. A clumsy British officer ambles into a sacred Hindu garden. He compounds his blasphemy by falling in love with the Brahmin priest's daughter, Lakme, leaving pretty Miss Ellen, his fiancee, high and dry.

Tragedy ensues, at some considerable length and with several rousing melodies, notably the coloratura Bell-Song, appropriately sung by Allison Bell in the title role and the BA ad Flower Duet, together with some atmospheric Indian dances. "When I first heard it, I thought oh God it's effing Bollywood," observed Michael Volpe, Opera Holland Park's singular general manager. It is not Bollywood but French Orientalism, characteristic of its time if, religiously speaking, a mishmash of Muslim-Hindu symoblism. That said, it is a model of tact compared with, say, Kismet.

The cast, not outstanding but decent, negotiated this unfamiliar score well. Bell had intonation problems but hit some ringing top notes, as did Philip O'Brien, constrained in the middle register but capable of elegant phrasing. Noel Davies, conducting, kept the pace moving. The excellent City of London Sinfonia, sensibly wearing woollies and flat caps, made the most of the score's exotic details.