But others have more money, and more power. “You can get anything with money,” she cries. Debutante balls were a meat market for the upper classes, nothing romantic. Adès’ does luscious elegance, but undercuts it with sharp, dissonant edges. “They don’t know how to do parties now,” she wistfully tells a young reporter. Saxophones and jazzy clarinets evoke the glamour of 1930’s London. Larger than life personalities just don’t fit in grubby society.

Defiant to the end, she cocoons herself away from a world that’s changing in ways she can’t understand (“Buggery, legal?” she exclaims.) Her end is sordid, but she keeps her dignity, at least in delusion. The headless men in the notorious photos got away scot-free, as did the philandering, brutish Duke, but the Duchess’s reputation was destroyed. Instead she grabbed life greedily, imbibing to the full. With her wealth and beauty she could have lived a charmed life, if she’d conformed. Perhaps that’s a reverse metaphor for the Duchess, too. The stairs also mean the cast can go up and down using the whole performance space, overcoming the cramped limitations of the small stage. In the end, Paul Keogan’s lighting turns it into a lurid neon sunset, the perfect coda to the Duchess’s life. In the small space of the Linbury Studio, Conor Murphy’s giant staircase overwhelms, but that’s the point: there’s no escape! It’s a brilliant piece of theatre in itself, because it changes character in each scene. There’s no way round the fact that the Duchess was destroyed by hypocrisy. “In your face” is probably an indelicate term to use in the circumstances, but it describes the magnificent staging well.

In 1963, she appeared naked, but for a string of pearls, in photos which caused a scandal, because she was performing on naked men (one of whom was later revealed as Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) The production is every bit as much of a star as the Duchess of Argyll, who inspired the opera in the first place. So cherish this wonderful production directed by Carlos Wagner. More recently, he’s revisited Powder Her Face, writing a suite based on it, so maybe that will reinvigorate his creative juices. He’s gone on to fame, fortune and Los Angeles, but hasn’t quite recaptured the vitality of his early work. The Tempest notwithstanding, it’s Adès’s finest work. In 15 years, Powder Her Face has gone from new music cult hit to an opera of international significance. The Power of Powder: Thomas Adès at the Royal Opera House, London

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