At its best, low-budget opera punches way above its weight. Opera Holland Park’s financial resources cannot match the Royal Opera’s but where the latter’s recent staging of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) is merely dutiful, Martin Lloyd‑Evans’s OHP production catches some of the opera’s hallucinatory intensity.

As at Covent Garden, the location is America (the setting censorship forced on Verdi) but here it’s contemporary. Gustavo, the tenor lead, is no longer governor of Massachusetts, but the President. Not quite Obama, more Jack Kennedy, who, like Gustavo, had an eye for other men’s wives.

The sorceress Ulrica becomes a daytime TV palm-reader, while Oscar, originally a trouser-role for soprano, is here a presidential aide in skirt and heels. Not everything coheres but a little narrative delirium suits the opera, although Bugs Bunny’s cameo is one post‑modern gloss too far.

The opening night’s biggest problem was nobody’s fault: the Gustavo, Rafael Rojas, had a chest infection, so David Rendall sang from the pit while Rojas lip-synched onstage. It worked surprisingly well. Rendall was never the most suave of tenors but his powerhouse voice rang out loud and mostly clear.

As Oscar, Gail Pearson lacks the pinpoint precision that the role demands but her acting is a class apart. Vocally she is more than matched by Amanda Echalaz, sometimes wild but always intense as Amelia, the central love interest. Peter Robinson conducts a reduced orchestra (City of London Sinfonia) but not so reduced that it can’t find room for a cembasso, an almost extinct trombone with a rude and earthy rasp quite in keeping with the production.
Until 8 August (0845 230 9769). www.ohp.rbkc.gov.uk.