Men playing boys playing girls, women and men, all female parts convincingly falsettoed and high musical standards as backbone: Sasha Regan's single-sex Gilbert and Sullivan has worked a special magic on Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and now The Mikado, not so much. Energetic song and dance are still in evidence.

This was a very fine concert indeed, plus a lot more. The first half was a very carefully planned series of unveilings around the theme of Béla Bartók and Hungarian folk music, the second an overwhelming performance of his Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.

 A Saudi princess in her white wedding dress digs her own grave as men pile up stones to hurl at her head — next, an Isis fighter is stabbing a knife at her neck to decapitate her. Ah, the fate of the heroine of the average baroque opera about the appalling ways of men and gods.

Until yesterday my only experience of the Welsh language in the opera house was a few isolated passages in Iain Bell’s In Parenthesis last year and the surtitles WNO routinely put up alongside the English in the Millennium Centre.

To hear The English Concert playing Handel is to arrive in technicolour Oz after a lifetime of black and white baroque in Kansas. We’re not short on period bands in the UK, but few bring this music into anything like the kind of focus that Harry Bicket and his crack team of musicians achieve, nor demonstrate such love and joy in the process.

I’ve seen the future, and it’s semi-staged. The gains here are far more significant than the losses. And where Opera North’s minimalist Leeds Town Hall Ring let Peter Mumford’s video projections fill in the gaps, this new production of Turandot is costumed, lit and directed, lacking only a backdrop. The chorus are squeezed stage right, tightly crammed into the choir seats. The cast gamely do their thing in the narrow space betwixt strings and stage.

For such a macabre, dark work, there’s an awful lot of grinning going on – notably from Opera North’s on-form orchestra, gleefully let off the leash in this most startlingly modern of Puccini operas. Tintinnabulists will swoon at the sight of 13 tuned gongs, and how often do we get to actually see a real cimbasso perched next to the trombones? Conductor Sir Richard Armstrong revels in the opera’s brassier excesses. It’s excessively, joyously loud in places, but I didn’t see anyone complaining.

Listen blind, and it’s hard to believe that this score was written in 1924. Puccini’s stark, declamatory choral writing and outré harmonies sound as fresh as paint, and, until the problematic close, there’s not a wasted note. I’ve rarely heard anything as musically exciting as this production’s first few minutes: a series of savage chords depicting the falling of an executioner’s axe followed by the Mandarin’s angular declamation, sternly dispatched by a nattily-dressed Dean Robinson. All terrific, and then the chorus enter, their combined force powerful enough to dislodge a toupée in the rear stalls.  

Annabel Arden’s staging revels in the physical constraints, the plotting and characterisation much clearer as a result. Alastair Miles’s Timur is a shabby, cowed wretch, his blindness implied with a mere smidgeon of face paint. Sunyoung Seo’s downcast, plainly dressed Liù stands out among the supporting cast, able to reduce her voice to a whisper while losing none of its colour. Rafael Rojas as Calaf is an impetuous, headstrong joy, his high register unchallenged by Puccini's louder tuttis. Set and costume designer Joanna Parker’s sole prop is a giant wobbly throne which begins to teeter precariously. Underneath which we catch a fleeting glimpse of Orla Boylan’s Turandot (pictured right) early on, a terrifying sight in metallic grey and black feathers. Her voice is suitably commanding and steely, only gradually revealing its warmth in the last act. And dressing Gavan Ring, Joseph Shovelton and Nicholas Watts’s Ping, Pang and Pong (below, left) as white faced circus clowns reminds us of their commedia dell'arte roots, the trio making brilliant use of suitcases, surgical instruments and a human skeleton.

Bonaventura Bottone’s Altoun exudes scary authority. Armstrong and Arden ratchet up the tension as the evening progresses, and it’s difficult to suppress a cheer as Calaf solves Turandot’s three riddles. Rojas’s sweet-toned Nessun dorma is utter perfection, aided by immaculate chorus work, and what a surprise it is to hear this iconic aria in context: Puccini‘s refusal to linger a real slap in the face. It’s the final scene which doesn’t quite work. Turandot and Calaf’s love duet, completed after Puccini’s death by Franco Alfano, feels like too easy a resolution and can’t help sounding a bit, er, 19^th century after what’s gone before. Adventurous listeners should seek out Berio’s much more radical 2001 attempt. Until that completion enters the repertoire, Opera North’s production will do, in spades. You can’t imagine Turandot being performed with greater gusto.

• On tour to Liverpool and Gateshead
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