Eastern promise | 16 July 2015

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.

Consider the riot of colours embedded in Delibes’ opera. We’re in India in the late 19th century, where officers of the British Raj fly the flag and march to fife and drums. There’s a bustling bazaar and glinting jewellery. Sensuous hues burst from the music. Flowers creep in everywhere, from the luminous lotus to the poisonous datura. But what does designer Morgan Large serve up? Acres of dull blues, greys, khakis and in-betweens, pierced only by the gilded cage from which Lakmé, the fated heroine, trills her famous Bell Song.