Familiarity can breed contempt, but for the Opéra-Comique and Delibes’s Lakmé, it’s a case of ‘trust the experts’. A work which had its wildly successful premiere at the house in 1883 has clocked up more than 1600 performances there. The company’s last new staging (2014) even starred the same soprano and tenor, Sabine Devieilhe and Frédéric Antoun, who play the Indian heroine and English hero in this 2022 production.

This show, which reunites Devieilhe with conductor Raphaël Pichon (the pair are, usefully, also married), restores the mix of spoken dialogue and singing used in that 1883 premiere. Even if director Laurent Pelly can’t dispel the muskiest notes of the opera’s perfume (an ‘exotic’ setting given little stamp of conviction), this is Lakmé shorn of glitter, and much of it is moving and memorable.

Pichon conducts the Pygmalion ensemble and choir with dash and urgency, the period instruments adding a litheness to the textures – there is no room for false sentimentality. Pelly goes for austere intimacy. Ballet sequences have been mostly cut to focus on the central drama. Set designer Camille Dugas and lighting designer Joël Adam banish India from one’s thoughts; the look is more non-specific other-worldly, with influences of kabuki. Papery sets peel apart and fold away to change settings, though I’m not sure about the shrine that the semi-divine Lakmé dwells in (a bit too much like a chicken coop).

The simplicity allows us to look at a more balanced clash of worlds. And the use of spoken dialogue against musical drama is more than just an authentic touch. Is Lakmé’s society naive, or is Gérald the Englishman’s? His group of blundering Brits (a lovely turn by Mireille Delunsch as Mistress Bentson, a Maggie Smith-esque governess) provide comedic turns that betray their own ‘Johnny the explorer’ mentality. Seen from Gérald’s point of view – Antoun’s wide-eyed vulnerability – Lakmé’s ungraspable world is a far deeper one. Still, she is a prisoner in it, meekly subservient to her father, Stéphane Degout’s impressively implacable Nilakantha.

Some sopranos would call this a canary role; Devieilhe clearly finds much to relish in it. Her crystalline timbre brings an aptly other-worldly quality to the music, and she blends beautifully with Ambroisine Bré’s Mallika in the Flower Duet. Her desolate Bell Song is not exactly a showstopper, more of a cry of desperation (it is, after all, a deadly honeytrap staged by her dad). Antoun’s high notes are sometimes muffled rather than ringing free but he phrases nicely and acts well. As Nilakantha’s ‘slave’, Hadji (here more of an exasperated acolyte), François Rougier rounds off a fully French cast and creative team who have the savoir faire to handle tricky material with aplomb.