“ Jamie Vartan's extraordinary set – all ropes, pulleys and whirling white tarpaulin – allows Lloyd-Evans to link her private tragedy with the convulsions of nature in ways that are thrillingly effective.... Provocative stuff, hugely recommended.”

“Now there's a challenge to concentrate the mind of any opera designer, leave alone one, Jamie Vartan, working within Opera Holland Park's limited resources. But it's amazing what you can do with a succession of ropes and pulleys and one humungous tarpaulin. With a little stretching of the audience's collective imagination and some stage-hand muscle you can create peaks and ravines and even, during Catalani's beautiful final act prelude, have the entire mountain range rear up before us.”

“ Opera Holland Park's terrific new production, unfussily directed by Martin Lloyd-Evans and designed by Jamie Vartan, solves the problem elegantly by avoiding naturalism: the Tirol is suggested by means of an off-white tarpaulin raised and lowered by ropes, and no attempt is made to present Tosca -like leaps into the abyss.This is Opera Holland Park at its best -a genuine revival and not just the exhumation of a corpse.Covent Garden should take it on now.”