When Toscanini conducted the premiere of Puccini’s last opera he famously ended the unfinished piece “where the Master laid down his pen”. Goodness knows where he would have brought down the curtain during Rupert Goold’s new English National Opera staging. Soon after it became apparent, perhaps, that the whole show is set in a Chinese restaurant, with whip-wielding waitresses terrorising the diners, bloodied dolls for decor, the heads of Turandot’s suitors served on platters, and pig-men dancing round with vicious cleavers.

Or perhaps in Act III, where the kitchen is revealed, replete with suspended headless corpses — presumably ready to be turned into takeaways. At least we now know why it’s called chop suey.

Personally, I enjoyed it. But then, I think Turandot is a horribly nasty work that deserves a good mauling. Setting it in a cannibalistic eaterie run by blood-crazed lunatics may be a monstrous slander on all those excellent Chinese establishments two minutes from the Coliseum — but no more monstrous than Puccini’s slur on the entire Chinese nation in the original opera.

And Goold does tackle the opera’s crucial problem. It’s the one that worried Toscanini: how to finish it convincingly, given that “the Master” himself couldn’t concoct a satisfactory way for the two ghastly protagonists who have allowed the loyal Liu to be tortured to death to live happily ever after.

Goold’s solution is to have a “Writer” on stage, dreaming up the story with prompts from a sinister little girl. But after Liu dies (and Puccini’s music runs out, to be replaced by Alfano’s mediocre ending), the Writer loses his notes and, literally, loses the plot. To reveal how would be unsporting. Let’s just say that the pen proves not to be mightier than the sword.

With garish sets by Miriam Buether, and costumes (Katrina Lindsay) that include Elvis lookalikes and a hundred other pop stereotypes, this isn’t a show that will be accused of subtlety. Nor will Edward Gardner’s conducting. The orchestra and chorus is often ear-splitting, and not always together. And Kirsten Blanck matches that with a turbo-charged Turandot, bereft of diction or volume control.

Amanda Echalaz’s Liu sustains an impassioned line, and James Creswell is a noble Timur. But the evening’s only true musical treat is Gwyn Hughes Jones’s Calaf: strong, unforced tone and a heart-warming Nessun Dorma. What a pity he’s dressed like some seedy sergeant in The Bill.

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