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Opera

Delibes’ Lakmé at Holland Park is visually soporific, but the singing keeps Geoff Brown awake

Plus: there’s a thrilling Verdi rarity, Giovanna d’Arco, at Buxton but Lucia di Lammermoor is not an essential night at the opera

18 July 2015

9:00 AM

18 July 2015

9:00 AM

Lakmé

Opera Holland Park, in rep until 31 July

Giovanna d’Arco; Lucia di Lammermoor

Buxton Opera House, in rep until 24 July

These are nervous times at the opera. When should we expect the gratuitous rape scene? Will the director relocate the action to a Croydon laundrette? Who might be booed, and for how long? With Opera Holland Park’s Lakmé, however, almost any of these diversions might actually be welcome — anything to save us from the tasteful visual torpor that looms over Aylin Bozok’s production like a choking black cloud.

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