When you go to the prince’s ball, would you prefer a night of sobriety or excess? Julia Burbach’s new production of Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) for English National Opera frankly errs on the side of theatrical over-indulgence. The stage-business treats arrive thick and fast like trays of richly seasoned canapés, from the scurrying kids in mouse costumes who act as the mastermind Alidoro’s hi-tech little helpers to the all-male chorus togged out in an assortment of scarlet-to-pink period outfits as Prince Ramiro’s ancestral ghosts. 

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be uphill from now on as Aleksandra Kurzak takes over the role of a diva out of her depth. Last night, though, she was unwell, and the role was taken by Ailyn Pérez, a lyric soprano who knows how to pull out all the right stops and whose dramatic truth complemented Oliver Mears’ production to perfection, presumably on little rehearsal time.

So it’s come to this: WNO’s autumn season reduced to two operas, a Tosca borrowed from Opera North and a revival of their own Candide from two years back; then two next spring. a revival of their Valleys saga Blaze of Glory (about mine closures and singers who won’t give up) and a new Flying Dutchman. And – wait for it – Tosca is with a reduced orchestra, not because some bright spark has decided to freshen it up, modernise it, but for a simpler, more compelling reason: there is no money.

One door closes, and another one opens. A lot. It’s extraordinary what value those two simple additions to the Royal Albert Hall stage lent to Glyndebourne’s performance of The Marriage of Figaro at the Proms.

At first, I had my doubts about Puccini’s Suor Angelica in this concert performance at the Proms with Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra.

There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International Festival, they’ve gone for an eye-popper with this staging of Gluck’s most influential work. Premiering at Australia’s Opera Queensland in 2019, its star attraction is the Brisbane-based Circa Ensemble, a group of acrobats, circus artists and physical performers whose antics light up the stage.

The craft heads to Mars, the music remains below on earth. Which is partly intentional: composer Jennifer Walshe tells us she listened to “synth heavy music” uploaded by astronauts (“a lot of Mike Oldfield and Vangelis”), so we veer from pop to sound-effects, some good (the sparkler held close to a microphone), some ordinary (a chain thrown to the ground sounds exactly like that). It’s a well-executed whole, though, and will be a hit whatever I write about it.

Even more perhaps than straight theatre, opera seems to draw attention to the meaning behind what may on the face of it appear a simple story. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the story, with all its realistic impedimenta, can be simply ignored or reconfigured, as has alas too often been the case.

The Buxton International Festival this year was lavish in its smaller-scale productions in addition to Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, the heavyweight offer of the opera programme. And outstanding among them was the combination of Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine: seen by director Daisy Evans not just as a double bill with an overlapping need for telephones on set, but as two sides of the same story.

At first sight, it seemed that Clonter Opera’s decision to tackle Tosca this year might be a leap too far. Its once-a-year complete production, dedicated to nurturing emerging talent in the security of the Cheshire countryside, must always be an essay in miniaturization, and a singing cast of six and an orchestra of 12 might seem hopelessly small for Puccini’s grand passions and shuddering shocks.