***

Adam Temple-Smith as Itchingham Lofte and Victoria Simmonds as Watkins in Itch | Photo: Jake Wiltshire

A steady mezzo-forte ostinato of rain drumming on the roof was an unkind accompaniment to the first night of Opera Holland Park’s new commission from the prolific Jonathan Dove, whose Flight was such a success here eight years ago. At the best of times, the acoustics of the high-roofed, semi-open-air auditorium here aren’t great for the middle ranks of seats, and Jessica Cottis’s 12-piece orchestra had to struggle against this unfair competition with Dove’s minimalist-influenced chugging accompaniments and crescendos, where a bigger band would have had more impact.

That’s an occupational hazard here, of course, and by no means fatal – and the weather could hardly dampen excitement at the company’s first main-stage world premiere. CEO James Clutton and his team have for ages provided the country’s warmest operatic atmosphere, along with top quality stagings, and everyone has only the best wishes for OHP. So it was a bit sad to emerge not breathlessly excited by this adventure-thriller; by no means a damp squib, despite the meteorology (and indeed, received with pretty tumultuous applause and enthusiastic reviews), but no edge-of-the-seat rollercoaster either.

It’s taken from some teen-fiction novels by the DJ Simon Mayo, written for his science-obsessed son, and the story is a promising one of ecological jeopardy averted and corporate badness thwarted by our shorts-clad schoolboy hero Itchingham Lofte, a chemistry geek whose rather edgy and mother-saddening hobby is collecting elements. When his local disused tin mine (we are in Cornwall) yields up some unusual glowing rocks which turn out to contain a new element with uranium-like powers, the scene is set for a tussle over this magical (but poisonous and potentially catastrophic) substance.

All very operatic, of course, with echoes of the Ring and its gold-that-must-be-returned-to-the-earth as well as every other plot based on humanity’s longing for the dangerous and the forbidden. The message is somewhat muddied by a romantic science teacher gushing about Gaia and the earth consciously giving us the material to heal the wounds we’ve inflicted on her (in which case spurning the gift seems a bit churlish) but basically we are in a good-and-evil chase without many moral complications. Which is suddenly not v operatic at all, and a bit of a let-down, since this is not being marketed as a children’s opera (and many of those that are, at the old W11 Opera – now London Youth Opera – for example, have a slightly more sophisticated morality).

The set of Itch, designed by Frankie Bradshaw | Photo: Jake Wiltshire

Dove’s music is never hard to listen to, and if there’s more sheer accompaniment – to Alastair Middleton’s neatly-turned couplets, as well as to the action scenes – than in a piece like Flight, it also dissolves into familiar idioms, the trancey counter-tenor songs of the surfer dude who finds the rocks (Jamie Laing), the redemptionist paeans of the teacher (Victoria Simmonds), the spikier contributions of bat-squeak business-hellion (Rebecca Bottone) and panto-villain child-hating teacher-kidnapper-extortionist (Nicholas Garrett). There’s a signature scoring of celesta, harp and percussion that emerges to accompany soulful moments, and a nicely numinous aria for Adam Temple-Smith’s charismatic Itch as he describes the wonder of the elements, each one musically characterised in the score’s most attractive display; plus flitting shades of reference to Wagner, Britten, Bernstein, neatly designed to alert the subconscious sensors. Musically it’s powered along by Berrak Dyer’s energetic piano, anchoring the bright wind and brass-heavy ensemble.

Despite Stephen Barlow’s pacy staging, on and around the ziggurat of Frankie Bradshaw’s periodic-table set, there are a couple of scenes that don’t come off, a rather humdrum abduction drama, and Itch’s father, strongly sung by Eric Greene, saddled with some rather emetic confessional stuff about being a Bad Dad (but Coming Through eventually, obvs) which sounds dropped in from some American saccharine-factory. Alongside some rather shallow eco-pieties that was a bit annoying, if you believe that opera really can address complicated issues in a grown-up way.