Poor Oberon! An opera scorned so long as weird and silly,

A mash-up of outlandish tales all chucked in willy-nilly.

Now brave Sir Mark (the Elder one) rides out to save its name. 

On Albert Hall’s broad field, will he win immortal fame 

And glorify the final work of Carl Maria Von Weber – 

Or leave the Prommers fretting over so much wasted labour?

One completely joyous moment has eclipsed all my other impressions of this Glyndebourne Entführung revival. By the end of Act 1 of the opera, the character of Blonde has been talked about – and in this production, briefly seen – but not yet heard. We then have one of Mozart’s brilliant reveals. Her first vocal entry is the aria “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” (with tenderness and flattery) which opens Act 2. For me, Julie Roset delivered a moment of utter magic with a glorious vocal presence and coloratura based on extraordinary musicianship.

Can the 1916 Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal added to a revised version of a 1912 opera-within-a-play setting the backstage shenanigans to music ever fail? Yes, alas. It fell horribly flat last night despite some radiant singing.

You don't have to be mad to enjoy Gerald Barry's methodically berserk approach to Wilde, but your wits might have begun to turn by the interval and you'll question your sanity by the end. Director Jack Furness has extra ideas the composer would surely like - Australia? Kangaroo!

Buxton’s summer jamboree for opera lovers this year offers a brace of baroque works, written 90 years apart, with the character of sorceress as their common feature.

Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula was one of the string of Italian operas created by him for London shortly after his arrival in Britain. First seen in 1715, it has four soloists only and the conventional unities of time and place – though early performances were apparently given with spectacular stage effects.

Buxton International Festival, long known for its explorations of some of the less well-known parts of the opera repertoire, this year features two of the best-loved, alongside its other fare.

Its first two nights saw a new production of La Traviata (jointly with Norwich Theatre, to which it will go after the Derbyshire spa town’s summer festival is over), and a borrowed one from Scottish Opera and Opera Holland Park of The Merry Widow (seen last year both north of the border and in London).

It was an awesome start, those three notes from the cellos even before Wagner's famous "Tristan" chord inspiring more deep emotion than the whole of the previous evening's Bellini I puritani. Somehow, though the end left me dry-eyed, and so did the rest of an undeniably impressive evening. Antonio Pappano gets magnificent sounds from his London Symphony Orchestra, but here felt like his predecessor Simon Rattle in hitting too hard at times, albeit with more flexibility.

When it was last staged at the Royal Opera 34 years ago, 33-year-old Bellini's swansong felt like a baggy monster barely justified by some brilliant singing (chiefly from June Anderson and Dmitri Hvorostovsky). Lisette Oropesa now adds remarkable acting to the star vehicle, but even Richard Jones can't do that much with an unwieldy drama, despite his usual signature elements and symmetries. The verdict remains that theatrically one-dimensional bel canto museum pieces like this are best done in concert.

Fifty years since Benjamin Britten died, and his operas are still in repertory: half a dozen of them at least. It’s a tribute to his theatrical, as much as to his musical, genius that these works still punch their weight on the stage as much as on disc; and perhaps none of them punches it harder than Billy Budd, which Glyndebourne are reviving in Michael Grandage’s spectacular production from 2010.

The conundrum of five women, three of them men, is the same as it was in the last Serse I witnessed, in the more intimate surroundings of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Paula Murrihy then sang the role of Arsamene, playing brother to Emily D'Angelo's Xerxes and lover to Lucy Crowe's Romilda. Now she's the imperious, capricious ruler to the life, totally different from D'Angelo's but just as valid.