Graeme Jenkins, music director of the Dallas Opera, put it bluntly the morning after Verdi’s Otello opened the season on Friday: “In five years we should be operating on a par with Chicago and San Francisco.” His bold forecast was based less on the quality of the performance than on confidence that the spectacular new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House will be an engine of growth. Once able to attract singers such as Maria Callas, the 52-year-old Dallas Opera made its mark long before the upsurge in US regional opera. But it stood by while others bounded ahead.

Alexandra Deshorties and Clifton Forbis

The new home can change that. Although lacking elaborate backstage equipment, its size (European-like at 2,200 seats) and singer-friendly acoustics (masterminded by Robert Essert of UK company Sound Space Design) make it a venue most other American audiences can only envy. The cast for Verdi’s late masterpiece is not one for the history books, yet in Tim Albery’s production and in these premises it gives a gripping performance.

Alexandra Deshorties’s moving portrayal of Desdemona is a case in point. Her voice, while basically attractive, lacks Italianate bloom and can sound shrill on top. But she transcends these flaws, because you can appreciate expressive details of her performance and attention to words – qualities that can get lost in a large house like the Met.

I sat near the front, but also checked out the last row of the stalls, where the voices were also consistently strong, despite the presence of an overhang. As Otello, Clifton Forbis sounded workaday when singing in his husky, occasionally unsteady middle register, but high notes rang out excitingly. Lado Ataneli’s Iago was also uneven but managed an incisive Credo, an addition to Shakespeare by librettist Boito that sheds light on the demi-devil’s villainy.

In contrast to the glittering Foster and Partners house, the Cyprus locale is depicted in Albery’s production as a weather-beaten, multi-tiered coastal fortress of rugged concrete and riveted iron (Anthony Baker is the designer) – a credible image of the island at war. The era is roughly the turn of the last century. All the women are first world war vintage army nurses but for Desdemona, whose ability to remain near her warrior-husband Otello – apparently a badge of privilege – will prove her undoing. The Moor himself is set off from the others by the dark richness of his costumes rather than dark make-up.

Co-ordination between stage and pit – especially when the chorus sang – was not flawless under Jenkins’s leadership, and he could have commanded more vigourous, incisive playing from the orchestra. But such problems are bound to fade as conductor and players become accustomed to the new house. It should be a labour of love.