I Gioielli della Madonna at Holland Park Opera

Holland Park’s summer season ends with a bang - of Krakatoan proportions. If there was a prize for the loudest opera on the planet, Wolf-Ferrari’s I Gioelli della Madonna (“The Jewels of the Madonna”) would be a shoo-in, and I would warn those sensitive to noise that for considerable portions of the evening I had my fingers plugged in my ears in an attempt to modify a decibel level in breach off all known EU regulations.

But nobody with a reprehensible taste for old-school carpet-chewing melodramatic hokum should be put off: this is a viscerally exciting and gripping performance of a neglected corner of the verismo repertory, written just before the First World War and strongly influenced by Carmen and Cavalleria rusticana.

^{Joel Montero as Gennaro in Holland Park Opera's production of I Gioielli della Madonna}

Set in anarchic downtown Naples, it is loosely based on actual events. Gennaro has the hots for his no-good adopted sister Maliella, who prefers the camorrista Rafaele. When Maliella taunts Gennaro that Rafaele has offered to steal the jewels off the local statue of the Madonna for her, Gennaro decides to get in there first. After an epidemic of bodice-ripping, screams of blasphemy and cries of rape, it all ends badly for everyone concerned.

The music is really pretty dreadful, most of it fired at full belt by a large orchestra and a massed chorus of priests, peasants and ragazzi. Glutinous folkloric colour (modal tunes, brass bands, accordions) is splattered on to the canvas, but there is no calm in the music, no gravity or dignity, and the vocal lines share a fault of many verismo operas - that of persistently masturbating towards a climax of explosive melody that it never achieves.

But one cannot deny that the resulting farrago holds one’s attention in an iron grip, especially in a production as straightforward and whole-hearted as the one by Martin Lloyd-Evans, conducted by Peter Robinson with no holds barred.

The baritone singing Rafaele (Olafur Sigurdarson) may roar his head off and the tenor Gennaro (Joel Montero) is tremulous, but Natalya Romaniw is quite thrilling as the wanton Maliella.

The voice delivers rich and even tone across a wide range, remaining steady even at dynamic extremes, and there’s stage presence and personality to match it. If she heeds the right mentors, this Welsh (sic) singer, winner of the Ferrier Prize last year and still only 26, could be incubating a world-class career as a dramatic soprano.

Until 2 August. Tickets: 0300 999 1000; (www.operahollandpark.com)