Richly enjoyable revivals of three recent successes from the Glyndebourne festival provided a major treat for opera fans as Glyndebourne on Tour reached Milton Keynes last week for its annual autumn visit. First came this summer’s Don Giovanni, reviewed last week by Giles Woodforde. There followed Peter Hall’s acclaimed production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, first seen in East Sussex (and, indeed, at MK) in 2005 and Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea in Robert Carsen’s 2008 staging of this seminal work of early Italian opera.

Poppea can be considered the pioneering example of an operatic genre to which Don Giovanni also belongs. Both show us a grade-A rotter in gleeful pursuit of sexual gratification where he can find it and with no let, seemingly, to his activities. Since the anti-hero of Poppea is that byword for Roman iniquity, Nero, it will be understood that he gets what he wants — divorce from his wife Ottavia (Louise Poole) and the elevation to Empress of his mistress Poppea, superbly sung by the German soprano Christiane Karg.

Nero’s portrayal by a woman, the excellent Italian mezzo Lucia Cirillo, suggested opportunities to exploit the character’s sexual ambiguity which were fully seized by the director. This was seen most graphically in his offhand murder by drowning of pal Lucano (Peter Gijsbertsen) after a gay bathtime dalliance together.

More bathing, I suggest, would not come amiss in the decidedly grubby household of Don Magnifico (hugely comic Jonathan Veira) depicted in La Cenerentola. For all the slaving on the orders of her horrid sisters Clorinda (Anna Siminska) and Tisbe (Victoria Zaytseva), the much-put-upon Angelina/ Cinderella (Allyson McHardy, pictured) seems to have made little impact on the grime. Presumably the Prince (Luciano Bothelho) is not averse to dirt. Happily, the singers and players, under conductor Enrique Mazzola, produced a performance that sounded more polished than it looked.