CHRIS GRAYon Puccini's neglected La Fanciulla del West at Grange Park

The new production of Puccini's vocally demanding La Fanciulla del West at Grange Park, near Winchester, makes a powerful case for this strangely neglected opera to be given a permanent place in the repertoire.

While a significant success at its 1910 New York premiére - partly, no doubt, on account of its Wild West setting - the work has never enjoyed the ongoing acclaim of its three predecessors, La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. This is surely because it is so different in a number of ways including its eschewal of show-stopping arias and lack of a tragic ending.

Like Butterfly, the opera is based on a play by the astonishingly prolific David Belasco. In character, however, it is entirely different. Set during the Californian Gold Rush, its brutal masculinity is reflected in the rugged orchestral scoring, sensitively interpreted by conductor Rory Macdonald.

Grange Park's designer, Francis O'Connor, succeeds brilliantly in bringing to life the Polka Saloon and its surroundings where we are to see - as Puccini noted in a preface to the score - how the gold miners "struggled, laughed, gambled, cursed, killed, loved and worked out their strange destinies".

At the centre of their lives admired and protected by all the men, and especially Sherrif Jack Rance (Olafur Sigurdson), is the Polka's proprietress Minnie (the excellent Cynthia Makris). Partly a feisty female in the Annie Oakley mould, she possesses a softer side, seen for instance in the Bible classes she holds for the men.

Most members of the audience will think at once of Snow White and Wendy Darling, adding an extra degree of absurdity that the highly melodramatic proceedings could well do without.

At any rate, both sides of her nature prove to be of crucial importance when she falls for Dick Johnson, aka the bandit Ramerrez (John Hudson). It seems as though this love is not to be as the miners prepare his execution in Act III - "Let Minni believe I have gained my freedom", he pleads in the opera's most famous aria. The arrival of the gun-toting gal herself - with an eloquent plea for mercy - leads to an altogether happier end.

There are further performances tomorrow and Wednesday and on July 2 and 4. For tickets call 01962 73 73 66, or visit www.grangeparkopera.co.uk