Opera Holland Park’s first mainstage premiere comes from the tried and tested pairing of composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton and is based on the Itch children’s books by Simon Mayo. It’s aimed at an all-ages audience – or one with an average age slightly younger than those filling OHP’s open-sided theatre on the coldest, wettest evening of the summer, watching with empathy as the tenor Adam Temple-Smith spent the final scene half-submerged in a well.
Temple-Smith plays Itchingham Lofte, a nerdy teenager whose hobby is collecting the elements of the periodic table, and whose acquisition of a mysterious lump of highly radioactive rock makes him a target for the stop-at-nothing executives of greedy Greencorps, leading to a high-jeopardy storyline of kidnap and escape, with a bit of rumination on ecological responsibility thrown in. Scored for 12 players and conducted by Jessica Cottis, Dove’s lean but colourful music bounces along, making something infectious out of Itch’s fascination – his hymn to the periodic table in the first scene is a highlight, glittering with celesta, glockenspiel and harp.
