L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, the fantaisie-lyrique in two parts that Ravel composed in the 1920s to a libretto by Colette, is an intricate, fragile piece of theatre, and an ambitious choice for the debut production from Virtual Opera. But directed by Rachael Hewer with designs by Leanne Vandenbussche, and with the London Philharmonic conducted by Lee Reynolds in his own reworking of the luminous score for just 27 players, it’s one of the most successful online operas I’ve come across over the last nine months.

Only the orchestra met up to record its contribution; the singers all rehearsed by Zoom, and recorded their roles from wherever in the world they were living. Just their faces appear in the final film, superimposed as digital vignettes on the hand-drawn characters they play. The action has been pointedly updated; the bored, wilful but rather serious child, played on screen by Amelie Turnage, and sung by the mezzo Emily Edmonds, is being home-schooled during lockdown – her tantrum includes smashing the laptop she’s supposed to be working at – and at one point her fantasy takes her into an emergency hospital, where she’s given oxygen by the Princess from the original story, dressed in PPE.

Hewer has updated the subtitles too, and replaced the words for the tea-service scene with a new text in Mandarin, but otherwise she presents the story clearly and wittily through the images Vandenbussche creates, which finally topple into a parade of images of opera houses and concert halls. As the child watches from a stage, the auditorium is gradually filled with the characters from her story, and so finds relevance and something genuinely touching in a work that can all too easily become brilliantly realised artifice.

There are a few moments when the synchronisation between the faces on screen and their singing goes awry, but otherwise musically it’s first-rate. Reynolds’ downscaled orchestration preserves the clarity and glitter to the score without sacrificing too much of its sumptuousness, and the LPO delivers it superbly. As well as Edmonds’ beautifully contained performance in the central role, there are some fine cameos among the cast – Karen Cargill as Mother, Marcus Farnsworth and Alison Rose as the armchairs, among them – and no obvious weaknesses. With all the technical challenges of putting it together, it’s a remarkable, polished achievement.

• Free on demand until 16 December.