Long the amiable but slightly eccentric cousin of the country-house opera family, Longborough Opera is growing up. But it’s doing it in the best possible way, with slicker productions (it’s barely possible to notice that the 500-seat theatre was once the Graham family’s chicken barn) that don’t compromise the laid-back charm of this Cotswolds corner.

Possibly the best thing about this new Traviata is the combination of some really punchy playing from the Festival Orchestra and the fiery dynamism of this production’s star find, the Italian maestro Gianluca Marcianò. True, he hustled through Violetta’s final moments with rather unseemly haste, but his confident and unflinchingly passionate way with Verdi’s lyrical lines is hugely impressive.

What you get on stage perhaps doesn’t always measure up. There’s nothing terribly awry with Sarah Chew’s belle époque-inspired staging, but the curious tints she adds to Verdi’s weepie – a few naughty japes and the odd pair of bare legs in Violetta’s salon, a bizarre reverse striptease during Alfredo’s aria De miei bollenti spiriti, in which the poor chap has to change out of his silken jim-jams – do little to get us any closer to the real drama of the piece.

Notwithstanding the need for a picnic break, putting one long dinner interval into the middle of Act II also plays havoc with the timeline of an already fast-moving narrative: if Longborough brings this staging back, that should really be rethought.

As for the acting, our two love-birds don’t really plug the gap: there’s too much posturing from both Martina Zadro’s pretty but impassive Violetta and Jaewoo Kim’s rather blank Alfredo. Vocally, however, it’s another story. If Marcianò can get Zadro to thin down her full-beam soprano more often, and draw a little more subtlety from the words, she should have an impressive career ahead of her.

Kim pleaded a throat infection, but his suave, authentically Italianate phrasing and easy high notes showed little need for the sick-note. Robert Presley’s Germont has his woofy moments, but he means every note he sings; the supporting cast, led by Anne-Marie Gibbons’s potent Flora, are uniformly excellent. The seasons’s off with a bang.

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