Bravo for Wexford and Romeo

Wexford Opera FestivalWexford, Ireland, until 2 Nov

I Capuleti e I Montecchi/ Of Thee I SingGrand Theatre, Leeds, until 1 Nov, then touring

Wexford used to be the home of lost operatic causes. Each October since 1951, the pretty Irish waterfront town has staged a festival of little-known works in the cramped confines of its antique Theatre Royal. Like the audience, and the sets, the conductor had to enter down the aisle, there being no other way to reach the pit. It was all part of Wexford's charm. Guinness and champagne played as crucial a role in a weekend visit as unknown singers in justly neglected operas.

Pass through that same modest back-street entrance now and you emerge into a shiny state-of-the-art Opera House, a 780-seater mini-Glyndebourne, its elegant horseshoe swathed in sleek American walnut. All for a mere €33 million (£27m), with a crystal-clear acoustic, spacious stage, comfortable seats, good sight-lines throughout the house, and local volunteers ensuring a warm welcome, even for the descendants of Cromwell.

All three of this year's operas, more-over, are well worth the trip. While sticking to the 'lesser-known' criteria suggested in 1950 by the visiting Compton Mackenzie, then editor of Gramophone magazine, they also maintain Wexford's long-cherished tradition of 'One for the heart, one for the head and one for fun'.

The 'one for fun' is this momentous year's best: Tutti in Maschera by Carlo Pedrotti, a contemporary of Verdi whose works have fared less well with posterity. Why? This is a delightfully melodious romp, full of opportunities for young soloists to show off their wares. A send-up of the backstage opera biz, with egos and libidos stretched as an Eastern mogul arrives in Venice to hire a touring opera company, it is artfully staged by Rosetta Cucchi. As the resident diva, the young American soprano Sarah Coburn seizes the chance to display her wonderfully pure, subtle voice - to the point where her name seems likely to join countless others, from Janet Baker to Lesley Garrett, in having Wexford to thank for its first chance to register on the international scene.

The 'one for the head' is a revival after decades of neglect for Richard Rodney Bennett's 1963 opera The Mines of Sulphur, a Gothic tale by Beverley Cross of dark doings in a remote rural manse. In a tense staging by Michael Barker-Caven, with a gifted cast led by John Bellemer and Caroline Worra, it fully justifies this re-hearing, replete with echoes of Britten and Henze. If it is overlong, and eminently trimmable, so is the 'one for the heart', Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden). Another beautifully scored piece, if somewhat lacking in dramatic momentum, its riches are mined in ravishing detail by the house orchestra under Dmitri Jurowski (yes, kid brother of the LPO's Vladimir). With the honourable exceptions of Katerina Jalovcova and Bryan Hymel, the young cast this time deserves to be spared its blushes, if not director John Fulljames for his perverse, often vulgar excesses in the name of knockabout folklore.

There is clearly plenty of money in this south-east corner of Ireland, or was before the economic tsunami. As Wexford now builds itself a spanking new library, amid hotels of eastern European grandiosity, let's hope this handsome new opera house does not prove a folie de grandeur. It is sensibly planning a populist spring festival to complement the rites of autumn, but what will keep it going the rest of the year?

One company it should woo for regular visits is Opera North, whose current season goes from strength to strength. It opened with Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing, a timely satire on US presidential elections (written, what's more, during the economic depression of 1931). It's an entertaining if slight piece, reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan in more than merely its canonisation of corn muffins. Suave turns from William Dazeley's President and Heather Shipp as his ditzy wannabe-First Lady are upstaged by Steven Beard's stumblebum vice-prez and Richard Suart's preening French ambassador. But Caroline Gawn's slick staging makes for a jolly enough night out, to be joined in the new year by its sequel, Let 'em Eat Cake

In the meantime, along with Christopher Alden's feisty update of Tosca, ON is touring a musically outstanding version of Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi, a work so static - in which so little happens, all of which we know, anyway - as to need really distinguished singing to rescue us from terminal boredom. Luckily, that superb mezzo Sarah Connolly has returned to her northern roots, alongside the fine Swedish soprano Marie Arnet, to keep us entranced throughout Orpha Phelan's imaginative staging, beautifully designed by Leslie Travers.

It starts worryingly, with leather-clad mobsters toting the machine guns now tiresomely routine on our opera stages. Once Romeo and Juliet are left alone, however, as they are for long, largely inactive periods, Phelan is sensible enough to let them emote without undue distraction. Both Connolly and Arnet deliver in rare style, as does the Lithuanian tenor Edgaras Montvidas (Tebaldo) and the house orchestra under Manlio Benzi. But the loudest hurrahs are rightly reserved for Connolly, whose rich, warm tone and immaculate phrasing make this one of the vocal performances of the year.