Dismissing the loss of an eye — gruesomely presented in a copious splurge of stage blood — as “a mere scratch”, medieval bovver-boy Malatestino (Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts) returns to the battlefield ready to inflict, and perhaps take, more punishment. The scene stirs inevitable memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with the indomitable Black Knight being cut down to size. The chainmail headgear of the chorus of archers and their stylised antics with flame-tipped arrows add to the risibility.

Laughter should be resisted, though, for it is hardly the fault of Riccardo Zandonai that his 1914 shocker Francesca da Rimini should invite such a comparison. Where he can possibly be faulted, however, is over the many comparisons his score must suggest to the work of other composers. One contemporary called him a “Debusstraussian” — and, yes, one can hear obvious similarities here to Pelléas et Mélisande with which OHP (by chance?) opened its 2010 season, and see in all the gore — there’s even a severed head — something of the tasteless excesses of Richard Strauss’s Salome. Mascagni and Puccini are obvious influences on this musical magpie, too.

But I can’t even hold this against him. These are mighty figures indeed — you can even throw in Wagner for his influence on Gabriele D’Annunzio’s story, after Dante — and Zandonai proves in many ways their equal in his gift for luscious melody and enthralling, scene-setting orchestration.

The plot hardly lacks excitement. Its focus, Francesca of the title (the splendid Cheryl Barker), is tricked into marrying the ugly, limping Gianciotto (Jeffrey Black) through the pretence that her suitor is his handsome brother Paolo (Julian Gavin). Having loved the latter on first sight — during a remarkable ‘love duet’ in which neither lover sings — she continues to love him, and to show it physically. This is a mistake, since the trysts are spotted by the single eye of the odious youngest brother, the aforementioned psycho Malatestino, who exposes the affair to her husband — with bloody consequences. Director Martin Lloyd-Evans makes these bloodier here, with the heroine clubbed to death by her husband rather than dying accidentally as she comes between the fighting brothers.

Musical highlights include the delightful Act III spring song from Francesca’s ladies (Madeleine Shaw, Emma Carrington, Anna Leese and Gail Pearson) and the ardent love duet between the guilty couple that follows. Their inspiration to adultery — their ‘sex manual’ so to speak — is a book telling the story of Lancelot and Guinevere which they read as their passion is roused.

Though hokum, this is always enjoyable hokum, and a musical delight under conductor Phillip Thomas.

Until August 13. Tel: 0845 230 9769.