Jean-Jacques Beineix’s film Diva, released 30 years ago, made popular for a time the aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana, from Alfredo Catalani’s opera La Wally, which figures prominently in the soundtrack. The occasional concert performance apart, the movie supplies the only opportunity most of us will have had to hear this showy soprano number, since the opera has not been given in Britain in living memory.

Full marks, then, to Opera Holland Park which, in accordance with its policy of offering the occasional rarity, has been treating audiences to a deserved revival of this neglected work. Unjustly neglected? Director Martin Lloyd-Evans’s thoroughly enjoyable production provides powerful evidence that this is so. Musically, the work stands somewhere between Wagner and Puccini whose sometime collaborator Luigi Illica provides a powerful libretto.

The revival shows, too, why others may have baulked at the staging of an opera set high in the Alps, with a crevasse into which leading lady Wally (Gwenyth-Ann Jeffers) and her lover Hagenbach (Adrian Dwyer, both pictured) both fall to their deaths, she having previously rejected the suitor, Gellner (Stephen Gadd), favoured by her father, Stromminger (Stephen Richardson). The topography is suggested by designer Jamie Vartan with a huge white plastic sheet hauled into various positions by ropes. The solution is not entirely successful, indeed sometimes slightly comical. Speaking of which, this production confirms that P.G Wodehouse was correct in seeing something essentially risible in Alpine hats, even if they’re not worn by Wooster.

All parts are expertly sung under conductor Peter Robinson, with an especially fine performance by Ms Jeffers, who shone last year as Leonora in OHP’s La forza del destino.

There is a final performance tomorrow night (Friday). Box office 0300 999 1000 (www.operahollandpark.com).