Opera Holland Park's reappraisal of Italian post-Romanticism has uncovered lost masterpieces over the years, though Alfredo Catalani's La Wally (pronounced "Valli") sadly isn't one of them. Huge claims were made for it in its day (1892), and Toscanini thought it greater than much of Puccini. But despite the cult status of Wally's aria Ebben? Ne Andrò Lontana, the opera remains something of a curiosity.

The subject aims high and is, in places, starkly modern. Wally, the orphaned daughter of a violent Tyrolean farmer, rebels against her father's values only to be destroyed, in her turn, by the cruel self‑will he installed in her. The dramaturgy, however, is flawed. The symbolic elision of Wally's volatility with the arbitrary ferocity of nature sits awkwardly with the work's realistic psychology. Catalani brings two men into her orbit – feckless Hagenbach and servile Gellner – and the latter, though compellingly drawn, simply disappears from the opera once he has served his narrative purpose. Catalani's fondness for German Romantics, meanwhile, results in an unwieldy amalgam of Italian lyricism and Brucknerian monumentality.

OHP do it wonderfully well, though. A brave central performance from Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, together with Martin Lloyd-Evans's probing, intelligent staging, make for music theatre of the highest order. Jeffers, sounding glorious, exposes layers of soul‑destroying vulnerability beneath Wally's torrential emotions. Jamie Vartan's extraordinary set – all ropes, pulleys and whirling white tarpaulin – allows Lloyd-Evans to link her private tragedy with the convulsions of nature in ways that are thrillingly effective. Adrian Dwyer's charismatic, if occasionally raw-sounding Hagenbach is nicely contrasted with Stephen Gadd's lethal Gellner, and there's fine, shapely conducting from Peter Robinson. Provocative stuff, hugely recommended.