As a consequence of efforts to achieve a realistic look to match the verismo of the opera’s content, the traditional fat lady has had – if you’ll forgive the oxymoron – a pretty thin time of it lately where productions of La bohème are concerned. Now other considerations are starting to prevail: casting must not only be colour blind (of course) but size blind too.

Holland Park’s latest Mimi, for instance, is a far cry from the frail seamstress of the libretto in the statuesque form of Linda Richardson. While we must take the word of her Rodolfo (Aldo Di Toro) that her hand is cold (since we can’t feel it), we have the evidence of our eyes that it is hardly tiny, being entirely in proportion to the rest of her.

This, happily, includes her voice, which is fully of the dimension the part demands. Ms Richardson’s thrilling singing makes a major contribution to the delight of this lucid, ungimmicky and (under conductor Robert Dean) always gloriously musical production of Puccini’s first great success.

She is admirably matched by Di Toro (pictured with her above) in the opera’s most affecting moments, including Act I’s closing duet, O soave fanciulla, which never fails, even here, to bring a tear to the eye.

‘Even here’ because director Elaine Kidd offers a functional and, to a surprising degree, unemotional account of the work, its ‘feel’ appropriately that of the 1930s slump. The settings (designer Colin Richmond) are spartan, with Holland Park’s wide stage dominated from the start by a framework supporting the huge Red Sea painting of artist Marcello (Grant Doyle), which is later ripped aside to reveal Café Momus where Hye-Youn Lee’s Musetta is set to strut so enticingly.

Her musical pairing with her man again works well, suggesting a treat is in store from Aussie Doyle’s appearance as the Count in next year’s Figaro at Garsington.

Until August 15. For tickets, tel: 0845 230 9769 (www.operahollandpark.com)