Typical. You wait all year for a singing, mourning, black-veiled Irish peasant, and a whole chorus of them turns up at once. Riders to the Sea, Vaughan Williams’ one-act opera based on the play by J.M. Synge, is a grief-laden piece with – at a running time of under forty minutes – more deaths per minute than the last act of Hamlet (probably).

Opening with a sorrow-stricken scene in which Maurya, played by Grace Durham, has already lost her husband, father-in-law and five beloved sons to the sea, and ending with the similarly aquatic death of her remaining son, this opera often comes across as an isolated denouement, albeit in the much revered nautical horror genre, cut off from its dramatic moorings. Yet, in the hands of director Imogen Tedbury, this is no bad thing, focusing as she does on Maurya’s cathartic final monologue in which the widow’s grief evolves to acceptance, supported by Williams’ swelling score and simple, sensitive choreography.

In fact, the staging was, along with the full orchestra and haunting, beautifully enunciated female vocals, one of this production’s true strengths. The chorus, for example, spend the majority of the performance seated silently around Maurya and her daughters on the floor, their faces obscured by black hooded shrouds. This offered a potent and striking reminder, (if a little unhelpfully reminiscent of Lilliputian Death Eaters) of a life permanently on the edge of pain and loss. When they do rise, their sorrowful melodies, steeped in the Irish tradition of vocal lament, combined with the music’s dark, immersive tonality seem to enhance the claustrophobia experienced by this woman. The threatening abyss that lies offstage, at the entrance to Clare Chapel, becomes increasingly hostile to Maurya, played by Durham with near-perfect shades of ferocity and dignity.

And this was the dress rehearsal. With minor gripes corrected – including an unhelpful invisible walking stick, and some incongruous glam rock-inspired make-up - Riders to the Sea is set to impress.