It always lifts the spirits when the little company that could, does. Over the last 30 years, Puccini has been a mainstay of Opera Holland Park’s artistic vision with, in recent years, notable stagings of Le Villi and Edgar. Now it’s the turn of Turandot, the only one of the composer’s works to elude them thus far, with three concert stagings in the opera’s centenary year.

Calling for colossal forces, it’s not surprising smaller companies give it a miss. Nevertheless, Tony Burke’s orchestral reduction proved more than adequate to express the sonic grandeur of Puccini’s score. All the required exotic percussion was on display with sufficient brass lending punch and panache. Only the Mandarin’s opening xylophone and a feeble electric organ let things down, a minor quibble considering the classy performance of the City of London Sinfonia’s 41 players under the stylish baton of Naomi Woo. Her fluid interpretation packed the necessary punch while finding felicitous details sometimes buried in the full orchestration.

Director Eleanor Burke brings some thoughtful ideas to the table, although singers are sometimes placed frustratingly distant from the audience and the imposed ending, where a distraught Turandot roundly rejected Calaf, feels forced.

José de Eça leads a strong cast as Calaf, his phrasing supple and his tone ideally Italianate. Nessun dorma was both elegant and thrilling, while an optional top C in the riddle scene found the Portuguese tenor barely breaking a sweat. Welsh soprano Fflur Wyn is a sweet-toned Liù with a lovely pianissimo, radiant in Signore ascolta and touching in her death scene. As Turandot, French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels has the necessary firepower at the top of the voice to ride the orchestra, though elsewhere she lacks amplitude and stability.

Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster and Zwakele Tshabalala created charismatic and convincingly contrasting characters as Ping, Pang and Pong, bringing out the music’s lyricism as well as its sardonic bite. Jihoon Kim is a warmly resonant Timur. As they demonstrated in this season’s La Fanciulla del West, the Opera Holland Park Chorus is a match for any choir on the circuit, joined here by the company’s enthusiastic youth chorus.