The 2012 season of Opera Holland Park — almost a ‘home gig’ thanks to the Oxford Tube stop just down the road — is off to a splendid start with Olivia Fuchs’s unfussy new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Notable chiefly for a compelling British debut in the title role by the Russian soprano Elvira Fatykhova — a singer of pin-point accuracy and (as is needed here) notable stamina — this pleasing opener is well sung throughout the ranks, and especially by the chorus.

With rain drumming on the tented auditorium and cold wind whistling in from the wings, the singers and orchestra did well to maintain their composure on the opening night. For the former, there was substantial Scottish dress (tweedy Edwardian rather than traditional tartan this time) to combat the cold; woolly hats were an unusual sartorial addition for some of the players.

Designer Jamie Vartan suggests the Highland crags of Sir Walter Scott’s tale by means of a grey rock face across the width of the stage. A central fissure divides at various points and is fully open, allowing a view of imposing Holland House behind, in time for Lucia’s wedding. This, of course, is not to the man she loves, Edgardo (Aldo Di Toro), owing to the machinations of her bad-hat brother Enrico (David Stephenson).

Poisonous lies having been spread about Edgardo, alleging infidelity, Lucia has reluctantly agreed to accept Arturo (Aled Hall), her duty to do so having been stressed by that familiar figure, the interfering cleric, this one, Raimondo, magisterially presented by the mighty Keel Watson.

The bad-mouthed Edgardo arrives just as the marriage contract has been signed, equipped with curses about Lucia’s disloyalty that precipitate her murder of Arturo and — the opera’s most famous episode — the ravings that follow. The mad scene is here supplied with authentic glass harmonica accompaniment from Philipp-Alexander Marguerre, who fully deserved the special applause invited on opening night by the conductor Stuart Stratford.

Until June 30. Box office: 0300 999 1000 (operahollandpark.com).