Vienna’s refreshingly ambitious Teater an der Wien is earning a reputation for reviving and reassessing many of those lost Romantic operas we hear of but hardly ever get a chance to see. Last month it was the turn of Boito’s famously unfinished Nerone, this month it’s Catalani’s La Wally, an opera that has survived for many years now on the durability of a single aria – the heart-melting Ebben? Ne andrò lontana – and the fun fact that its heroine meets her death in an avalanche.

La Wally, to a libretto by Luigi Illica, who would go on to pen masterpieces for Puccini, was based on a popular novel by Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836–1916). Die Geier-Wally (The Vulture Wally) is a torrid tale set in an isolated community in the Tyrolean Alps. The heroine’s unfortunate name, Wally, is short for Walburga (equally unfortunate, some might say) and the Vulture bit recalls how she once stole a vulture chick from the nest. Yes, she’s a feisty one!

For all...