Another week, another attempt to solve the Purcell problem. There’s a problem? Well, yes, if you consider that a composer universally agreed (on the strength of Dido and Aeneas) to be a great musical dramatist left only one stageable opera (that’d be Dido and Aeneas), but hour upon hour of theatre music that’s effectively unperformable in anything like its original context: i.e., yoked to text-heavy Restoration dramas. How to get this stuff back on stage?

Masque of Might, David Pountney’s new extravaganza for Opera North, is one solution, and it’s rather a fun one. Purcell’s Ode for the Birthday of Queen Mary and Welcome Song for King James II were uncritical affirmations of their era’s ruling ideology, so it’s appropriate that this 21st-century masque should be subtitled ‘an eco-entertainment’. Recycled items of scenery (notably the caravan from Opera North’s current Falstaff) are pressed into use, and of course the entire score (which includes numbers from Dioclesian and The Indian Queen as well as those fawning royal odes) has been vigorously re-purposed.

Pountney weaves the different numbers together with flair, dispensing (wisely) with spoken dialogue and keeping the whole thing moving seamlessly along. This being a masque, the story is rudimentary – just enough to support song, dance and a thumping great moral. The tyrant Diktat (Callum Thorpe) is born and starts to despoil the environment. We know he’s bad because he wears a tie and – er – because he’s called Diktat. A Swampy-like activist, played by Andri Bjorn Robertsson, is given the name of Nebulous.

Anyway, Diktat gets his comeuppance and trundles off inside that caravan while everyone sings and dances in celebration. Again, that seems very much in the spirit of the 17th century; you don’t want to overthink these things. At various points you’ll see a man-sized baby in a colossal pram, dancers dressed as wolves (the choreography, by Denni Sayers, is like a bubbling stream of visual energy), evil clowns and god-like figures in gilded headpieces strutting their stuff in eye-popping baroque court dress (seriously, the full Louis Quatorze. They went there).

Planets spin majestically in the background, but Purcell’s music is front and centre throughout. There’s not much scope here for characterisation but instead, there are moments of poised, piercing beauty (Anna Dennis’s glowing performance of ‘The Plaint’ from The Fairy Queen) and stirring vocal bravura. Thorpe, as Diktat, poured out his furious passagework with high-octane vigour while two first-rate countertenors (James Hall and James Laing) sang nimbly as the comic relief.

Meanwhile, the Opera North orchestra (under Harry Bicket) delivered bouncing, muscular Purcell. After decades of low-calorie authenticity, doesn’t baroque music sound juicy when played by a big modern-instrument band? Masque of Might sags a bit after the interval – a sequence involving the Witch of Endor seems to be there purely because Purcell’s ‘In Guilty Night’ is an amazing bit of writing and Pountney couldn’t bear to leave it out. But there are worse faults in opera than loving the music too much.

ENO has revived Cal McCrystal’s production of Iolanthe and the original 2018 staging was such a joyful experience that I couldn’t wait to see it again. You should, too. This is G&S in excelsis: a spectacular, gleefully funny and gorgeously sung staging that treats Gilbert and Sullivan – rightly – as the inventors of the West End blockbuster. Ellie Laugharne and Marcus Farnsworth are still delightful as Phyllis and Strephon, and the new cast members – John Savournin as the Lord Chancellor and Catherine Wyn-Rogers as the Fairy Queen – are all good news. Chris Hopkins conducts Sullivan’s iridescent score with the Mozartian subtlety it demands and deserves.

Still, with repeat visits, you notice things. Two very different moments jumped out: one was the end of Act Two, when Iolanthe (Samantha Price) is reunited with the Lord Chancellor. Gilbert is often chided for mocking his older characters, but here’s a scene in which an old man discovers that the beloved wife he thought dead is still somehow alive and young. Gilbert pauses the topsy-turvy and Sullivan rises sublimely to the moment, before gliding on to the deliriously silly finale without dropping a beat. Pure mastery, played with marvellous delicacy by Price and Savournin.

The other was a jarring political dig – Tories: boo, hiss! – crowbarred by McCrystal into Private Willis (Keel Watson)’s soliloquy. Refresh the satire by all means, but remember that Strephon is leader of both parliamentary parties and the joke is on the system as a whole. Gilbert was too intelligent – too generous – to make his audience pick sides. Drop a party-political gag and sure, you’ll hear a bellow of slightly forced laughter from roughly half the audience. The other half will be sitting there in silence and making a mental note that they aren’t welcome. That seems a high price for a cheap laugh.