English National Opera, laudably eager to spare its audience a relentless diet of operatic gloom, enjoyed a hit last year with Cal McCrystal’s hilarious, knockabout reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. Buoyed up by that sizzling success, ENO has tried to replicate the formula this season with the ultimate operetta, Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. But lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.

While there are belly laughs aplenty in a show that sparkles with glamour, there is more to sharpening up a book and lyrics than sprinkling the libretto with vulgarities and cringe-making rhymes, and having old men repeatedly fall over their Zimmer frames. This Merry Widow feels like an operetta trying too hard to be a pantomime. And, crucially, a lack of original wit comes coupled with an embarrassment at displaying true affection. Director Max Webster’s show is so determined not to take itself seriously that it often rides roughshod over Lehár’s romantic score. Yes, we all know it’s as sugary as a Viennese pastry, but if you are going to eat it don’t leave the best bits on the side of your plate.

In 1905, Lehár was drawing attention to a patriarchy that felt threatened by rich, independent women, a feature that is constantly hammered home in this production, to the point that the men of Pontevedro stand in the gents, bemoaning their bafflement with women and seeing who can piss the highest. It’s embarrassing.

But even with its clunky April De Angelis book and charmless lyrics (Richard Thomas), this Merry Widow will surely pack them in. Soprano Sarah Tynan makes the most beguiling Hanna Glawari, the young widow with so much wealth that the future of the skint Balkan state of Pontevedro depends upon it. She commands the stage, singing and dancing with genuine allure. It’s a truly star turn, and her perfect rendering of Vilja, o Vilja, perched high on a glowing crescent moon, is a showstopper, a moment of authentic beauty amid the breakneck silliness.

Nathan Gunn displays his Broadway credentials in his easy-going portrayal of Count Danilo, the man whom Pontevedrin diplomats are desperate for Hanna to marry if they are to avoid becoming a pariah state. In one rare truly original gag, ENO comic stalwart Andrew Shore, as ambassador Baron Zeta, describes a future Pontevedro as a miserable country “with no industry… that no one in their right mind would do business with”. Cue cheers from a firmly anti-Brexit audience.

Gerard Carey as Njegus, clerk to the Pontevedrin legation, is a funny clown, but tenor Robert Murray, as the hapless Camille, and soprano Rhian Lois as his lover, Valencienne, suffer from Webster’s heavy-handed determination to make the audience laugh at all costs, the tenderness of their love duets ignored as they are made to caper round the stage in ever dizzying circles.

Still, glitzy designs by Ben Stones, eye-catching choreography from Lizzi Gee and lively conducting from Kristiina Poska go a long way to make this an entertaining evening. Just leave your scruples behind.

There was another rich, powerful, independent woman striding the London stage last week, and shortly to be seen throughout the country, or perhaps we should say the realm. Rossini’s Elizabeth I (Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra) joins Verdi’s Macbeth and Mozart’s Idomeneo on the road in hard-working English Touring Opera’s spring season, which will also feature two community productions.

Elizabeth I, from 1815, was the 23-year-old Rossini’s first spectacular opera for Naples, and is a supreme example of bel canto style, requiring singers with exceptional technique. It has to be said that none of the principals in this engaging production escape entirely without mishap in this ferociously difficult score, but nonetheless Mary Plazas makes a truly regal queen, torn between her duty to the state and her love for the Earl of Leicester (Luciano Botelho). Leicester has covertly married Matilde (delightful Lucy Hall), daughter of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, a secret divulged to the furious Elizabeth by the duplicitous Duke of Norfolk (John-Colyn Gyeantey).

James Conway’s production is a model of clarity, simply yet strikingly designed by Frankie Bradshaw and intelligently conducted by John Andrews. And if the principals occasionally come unstuck, the chorus is rock-solid, making a thrilling, cohesively warm, full-bodied contribution to the success of the evening.

The Catholic composer William Byrd enjoyed the protection of the actual Elizabeth I when working at the Chapel Royal, producing not only polyphonic Latin mass settings but homophonic works for the new Anglican rite, drawn from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. Chief among those is The Great Service, a lavish, 10-part masterpiece, unpublished in his lifetime and only reconstructed when partbooks were discovered at Durham in 1922.

The years fell away last week when the excellent Odyssean Ensemble sang sections from this choral rarity (newly recorded on the Linn label) at the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London, the once grim prison that housed so many recusants, Byrd’s friends among them. Such sweet music springing from such dangerous times.

Star ratings (out of 5)
The Merry Widow ★★★
Elizabeth I ★★★
Odyssean Ensemble ★★★★★

• The Merry Widow is in rep at the Coliseum, London, until 13 April
• Elizabeth I tours until 23 May