In order to match music’s broad gestures, operas based on historical incident avoid the detail of events in favour of psychological portraiture.

Donizetti’s picture of Anne Boleyn in his opera of the same name (Anna Bolena) is as raw a revelation as one is likely to find in bel canto opera of the 19th century and ends with a twenty-minute mad scene before the heroine meets her executioner.

By this time, her husband, Henry the Eighth, has departed the stage, having also engineered the despatch of his other Boleyn-connected enemies and paved the way for marriage to Jane Seymour.

It took an Italian composer to register the agonising private turmoil underlying the most familiar public machinations in English history, the opera’s three hours indicative of how relentless is the exposure.

Although dark and somewhat stylised, Alessandro Talevi’s new production on Madeleine Boyd’s black-box set is an auspicious start to WNO’s series of Donizetti’s Tudor operas, to be followed by the same composer’s Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux this Autumn.

Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia in the title role keeps a tight rein on a part that can run away with the singer. It does at times with Robert McPherson as Boleyn’s former lover Lord Percy, though he deals manfully with the part’s hazardous upper reaches.

Alastair Miles is a growling King, Faith Sherman a generous-voiced Smeaton the musician, and Katharine Goeldner a measured and sympathetic Jane. Daniel Grice (Rochefort) and Robin Lyn Evans (Hervey) complete a well-cast team.

The singing overall, chorus especially, is full-throttle and Daniele Rustioni’s conducting shapely and ever keen.

All in all, a terrific start to a brave and bold operatic venture.