What a load of balls. No, seriously. Globes, orbs, moons, suns, juggling balls, beach balls, er balls balls: if it’s spherical and pregnant with symbolism then you’re bound to find it somewhere on the props table for English National Opera’s Akhnaten. At the centre of Phelim McDermott’s new production of Philip Glass’s opera is a troupe of jugglers.

Anyone who says Handel can’t do psychology should spend an evening with Orlando. Form, orchestration, even exit conventions are all reinvented or cast aside for a work of startlingly contemporary fluidity, where music is completely the servant of drama. Stripped back to little more than the score last night, in one of the Barbican’s very-semi-stagings, Handel’s emotional architecture was completely exposed, allowing us to see just how jaggedly inventive its lines really are.

Brand-new youth operas tend to fall into two types. One is hugely rewarding for the participants, a skill learned and a treasurable group experience to be remembered for the rest of their lives, as well as for their friends and family in the audience. The other, a rarer breed, does all that but also takes a gripping subject transformed by that strange alchemy of operatic setting, stunningly well performed by singers and players alike, and sears everyone who sees it with its special intensity. Nothing fits the latter bill like no other work of its kind I've seen.

From working-class hell via convent purgatory to Florentine comic heaven, the riches of Puccini's most comprehensive masterpiece seem inexhaustible. In a production as detailed in its balance between the stylised and the seemingly spontaneous as Richard Jones's, first seen in 2011, there are always going to be new connections between the three operas to discover. Some things are stronger, some weaker second time around, but you still come away convinced that each work glows best in its original context, and that none should be prised away.

The third of Beaumarchais’s Figaro plays, La Mère coupable, is a very different affair from the other two, in that it records actual adultery and its disastrous consequences (including Cherubino’s death in battle), as opposed to the largely comic innuendos and mistaken identities of The Barber and The Marriage.

From the more or less inconsequential wit and bravura of The Barber of Seville to the profound comic psychology, social nuances and unparalleled musical genius of The Marriage of Figaro, and from the silly antics of Sam Brown’s Rossini to the style and brilliant stage management of Tobias Richter’s Mozart, is a good lesson in music theatrical history played backwards.

In the end, it’s all about the oranges. They adorn the programme that accompanies Harry Fehr’s intelligent new production of Handel’s Ariodante for Scottish Opera. More importantly, they’re prominent in designer Yannis Thavoris’s clinical steel-and-glass set, growing on carefully groomed bushes in six neat tubs, placed meticulously below warming light bulbs, protected from the gales and snow drifts outside by a wall of glass.

In the light of what follows, it's probably best to be clear that I'm completely behind the artistic side of ENO in rejecting a 25 per cent reduction of the chorus's annual salary, tied to a shorter season. A full-time chorus of this size is the heart of a big company – without it, no Mastersingers, no Grimes, no Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A creative alternative solution must be found. Musically matters stand stronger than ever, with the new regime's most recent hit being a transformation of what was originally a lame-duck Magic Flute.

Spoiler Alert. It’s Act Three of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The witches have done their worst, Aeneas is about to take ship, and the tenor Guy Simcock steps forward as the drunken sailor to sing what – as music director Christopher Monks has confided to us before the overture – will be his first solo role with Armonico Consort. At which point, the leader of the orchestra suddenly leaps up onto a chair behind him and starts belting out the sailor’s song himself, reeling tipsily about and fiddling all the while as Simcock slumps disconsolately back to the chorus.

The latest themed season from WNO, to add to their fallen women, Donizetti queens and what not, goes by the slightly worrying title (for anyone with a short attention span) of “Figaro Forever”, and consists of an operatic sequence derived from Beaumarchais’ three Figaro plays and ending with a new opera by Elena Langer partly based on the last of them, La mère coupable.