After a sombre start to Glyndebourne on Tour’s annual autumn week at Milton Keynes with Puccini’s La bohème, the company played it for laughs with the two operas that followed. This was the cause of no surprise where the rib-tickling delights of Donizetti’s tune-packed Don Pasquale were concerned, but Handel’s Rinaldo — the story of a christian warrior’s feats of derring-do set during the first Crusade — hardly seemed on the face of it the stuff of comedy.

That it proved a rich source of amusement was entirely owing to director Robert Carson’s production which overlays the action with schoolroom high jinks in Hogwart’s/St Trinian’s style. ‘Pupils’ come to take on the various roles in the drama, with a boys versus girls theme developing as the story unfolds. The Saracan sorceress Armida (Ana Maria Labin) is transformed into a cane-wielding dominatrix who, having spirited away Rinaldo’s beloved Almirena (Elizabeth Watts), herself falls for the hero when he arrives on his rescue mission. Cue for some risible japes in the dorm as Rinaldo (Christophe Dumaux) is lashed to a bed by his determined would-be seducer.

Packed with glorious melodies (some recycled from earlier works), Handel’s first London opera proved as easy on the ear under conductor Laurence Cummings as one would have expected. Sterling work from a quartet of trumpeters helped build the work towards a triumphant conclusion in which one was surprised to find the Crusader soldiers employing their swords first as air guitars (right) and, later, as cricket bats.

Visual appeal (designer Julian Hansen) was the hallmark of Don Pasquale, with a revolving set used to transport us around the lavish home of the old fool stupid enough to take a young woman to wife. Pasquale (Jonathan Veira) thinks ‘Sofronia’ to be the convent-educated sister of his pal Dr Malatesta (Andrei Bondarenko). In fact, she’s Norina (Ainhoa Garmendia), the disapproved-of beloved of the don’s nephew and heir Ernesto (Enea Scala). As soon as the marriage is contracted — a sham, though Pasquale does not know it — she is ready to punish him where it hurts most, in his wallet, in a scheme designed to unite her with Ernesto. Under conductor Enrique Mazzola this proved a marvellously entertaining romp.