The central performances are tremendous: Glyndebourne’s Luisa Miller, reviewed

Opera buffs enjoy their jargon. We all do it, scattering words like ‘spinto’ and ‘Fach’ like an enthusiastic pizza waiter with an outsize peppermill. It’s principally a means of signalling that you’re part of the club. But occasionally it’s genuinely useful, and Glyndebourne’s new production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller had me thinking about the concept of ‘tinta musicale’, a term used to describe Verdi’s sense that each of his operas should have its own distinctive sonic colour. The late-summer warmth that suffuses Falstaff, for example, or the maritime translucence of Simon Boccanegra. Or take La traviata: the enervated violins of the prelude, the hectic brilliance once the curtain rises. Already, you’re right there at the fevered extremes of the illness that defines the plot. Once you’re attuned to the idea, Verdi’s palette gives even an identikit early-period melodrama like Luisa an atmosphere that’s entirely distinctive.

In this case, it’s a German Romantic sound-world of baleful clarinets, hunting horns and low, surging string melodies that (at least to the sensibility of an Italian opera composer in the 1840s) makes a perfect fit for the Tyrolean setting of the opera’s source, Schiller’s play Kabale und Liebe.