That spirit of delight which hovered over Christopher Alden’s stylish/surreal Handel bagatelle when I first saw it in the 2017 revival soars on eagle wings here. It’s hard to imagine a better or more charismatic cast, led by national treasures Nardus Williams and Hugh Cutting, or a more striking contrast to Dead Man Walking: with that and its slyly subversive Albert Herring, ENO is on a roll.

At least two facts stare us unflinchingly in the face here. For all the programme’s harping on how “everyone has their own view about the death penalty,” I don’t think there was any doubt in the audience’s mind about the horror of its Old Testament vengeance. And I also doubt if anyone was ultimately left unmoved or stunned by the hard-hitting performances of a perfect cast. This is music-theatre at its riveting best.

Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad end”. In which case, the even stranger Makropulos Case is a chattery legal mystery with a transcendent end as the 337-year-old (437 in this update) protagonist decides life only has meaning within its natural span and rejects the formula she's come for.

Emotional truth backed up by musical sophistication is what saves Puccini’s drama about a geisha deserted by an American officer from mawkishness. Director Daisy Evans has a very good idea for getting at its palpitating heart in a production of stunning visual beauty; Celine Byrne in the title role gives us vocal opulence but not nearly enough identification with a woman whose total, misplaced love leads to painful hope and desperate tragedy.

A drawback of choosing relatively or very obscure operas, as they've been mostly doing in Wexford Festival since 1951, is that the audiences probably won’t come out humming the tunes. That changed this year with the inclusion of Le trouvère, which most of us know – minus the ballet music and a few striking changes in this French version – as Il trovatore. A risk, since budget forbade big names in the four main roles, but the casting yielded unexpected treasures.

If the distance from Festen to The Railway Children looks like a long stretch of track, remember that Mark-Anthony Turnage’s operas have often thundered through the drama of shattered families mired in mystery and secrecy – all the way back to the Oedipal conflicts of Greek in 1988.

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Bohème for Opera North is over 32 years old but still feels young. And for its audiences it still has the ability to capture – as the opera is designed to – the experience of youthful love and separation, its ecstasy and its heartbreak.

Britten’s Albert Herring is one of the great 20th century comic operas; only Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest draw such whole-hearted laughter. If it’s never been performed in the London Coliseum before, that’s because it’s a chamber opera with a 14-piece ensemble in the pit. This clever compromise shouldn’t be going to Lowry, Salford for its third and fourth performances but touring the country in much smaller houses.

“Safe” is a word used far too often in ENO’s bizarre new version of a programme, full of uncredited articles, at least two of which look as if they’re AI generated. Everything intimacy director Haruko Karoda, Niamh O’Sullivan (Carmen) and John Findon (Don José) say makes sense, but the context is worrying. What’s a Carmen without real danger? Revival director Jamie Manton has toned down Calixto Bieito’s once-semi-controversal production, and it shows.

It’s a good year to be Handel-lover. No sooner have summer runs of Rodelinda (Garsington) and Saul (Glyndebourne) finished than we’re into autumn and Opera North’s Susanna, Giustino at the Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre, with Ariodante still to come on the main stage.