English National Opera hits the ground running with Verdi’s Otello to open its 2014-15 season. One of the greatest of operas, Shakespeare’s story expertly filleted by librettist Boito and set to wonderfully thrilling and beautiful music by Verdi, with drama and human interaction at the forefront, and here the orchestral thunder and lightning crackles from the off, Edward Gardner and the ENO Orchestra in top form. And so it continues from the pit. Gardner leaves you in no doubt, with his pacing and the vividness and sensitivity of the orchestral playing, that something special is occurring, which is maintained throughout the four acts. The choral singing is mightily impressive, too; the time of the action is updated and Otello’s crew seems dressed like freedom-fighters.

David Alden’s directional gambits are less clear if at times blessedly free of distractions and getting to the heart of the story, but particular motions (hand gestures, wriggling) then become questionable, and if the vast yet spare set is virtually unchanged across the opera’s course – what was once grand is now dilapidated, and darkly if translucently lit – then something seems amiss in the final act, which lacks tension and motivation, hardly the atmosphere for Otello to take (wrongful) revenge on Desdemona and then commit suicide.

For all the grandness of the music, it is Otello, Desdemona and Iago that are the central figures, often intimate in wholly different ways, the first two in love until Otello’s suspicious side gets the better of him, fuelled by Iago’s black-hearted, evil conniving. In the latter role, Jonathan Summers is superbly slimy. If his voice is maybe now showing some raggedness, but what authority he has, it is entirely appropriate and enhances the role; Summers’s singing of Iago’s ‘cruel god’ Credo was blackly thrilling and scary.

As Otello, Stuart Skelton is vocally magnificent, if not quite as involving here as he is as Peter Grimes. He does anger well, and can chuck the odd chair around, but although one relished the vocal magnificence – whether tender in the Act I love-duet, or petulant later – somehow Otello’s complete character didn’t quite emerge.

As Desdemona, Leah Crocetto can sound edgy and inconsistent across the range, but hers is a big voice and it opens out marvellously; furthermore she really has us on her side, as the absolutely innocent and totally faithful wife that she is.

Other roles – not least Allan Clayton’s Cassio – are not yet fully in the picture, and it will be interesting to see how these parts have developed, alongside Skelton’s Otello, as the run proceeds. As it is, there is much to relish – especially from Crocetto, Summers and Gardner and through Skelton’s vocal resources – and, as we know, this is a really great opera, in its story, libretto (in decent English translation by Tom Phillips) and music.