Let's get the gripe about Scottish Opera's new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which opened last night, out of the way. It was the audience.

I understand the urge to applaud after every set-piece number. Usually it doesn't bother me, but in this case I'll make an exception. The outbursts of applause undermined profoundly the consistency of John Doyle's understated staging of the work. It was ruinous to the mood and concentration of the production.

Doyle's staging, with Liz Ashcroft's bleak design and Wayne Dowdeswell's shadowy lighting, will not appeal to all. It is ominously dark, perpetually cloudy and swirling with threatening mists. Some will feel a dichotomy between the setting and the brilliant colours of Donizetti's delicious music.

The great grey pillars that dominate the set could be castle walls or, equally, standing stones in Orkney. It's a serious, fate-drenched backdrop for the tragedy of Lucia, and it permeates every nuance of Doyle's anti-rhetorical staging of the work. It has to be seen.

It seeps into characterisation. Everybody's trapped, not just Lucia but her brother Enrico; Raimondo, the chaplain; Arturo, the would-be husband of Lucia; and Edgardo, whose love scenes with Lucia are a ray of loveliness. Doyle's weaving of this fabric is wonderful.

The cast is good, including Sally Silver's searing Lucia, Andrew Schroeder's desperate Enrico, and Bulent Bezduz's Edgardo. Julian Smith conducts stylishly.