The Merry Wives of Windsor [Blackstarmedia]

OPERA. You think you’ve got it sussed – the divas, dress code, chandeliers and champagne in the interval – but then you go to the Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn season and discover something very different. Edgy (as befits an opera festival in Dalston), raw, accessible… and needless to say, cheaper.
Grimeborn (it’s a verbal joke on Glyndebourne) has been running 16 years now and delivering extraordinary things – done simply, sometimes roughly, but with energy and passion. What it programmes tends to be new work, but with some re-thought classics thrown in. And it’s running now, with a queer take on Nicolai’s innocuous operetta Merry Wives of Windsor (re-thinking with a vengeance there) done by a visiting company from Norway and running to July 22.

Next up is the long-delayed UK premiere of a collector’s item: Marc Blitzstein’s No for an Answer, which is a piece of 1940s socially engaged music-theatre about New York’s unemployed. It may not sound like fun but it was one of the things that fed into the development of American opera, hugely influential on Leonard Bernstein. And it’s time it reached a stage in Britain: runs July 26-29.
Other things in the season include Bernstein’s own exquisitely beautiful miniature Trouble in Tahiti, and new operas on subjects ranging from the Bronte sisters to Tinder-dating in A&E. In other words, pretty comprehensive. Details: arcolatheatre.com

• The premiere of the week, though, is unquestionably Itch at Opera Holland Park. A new piece by Jonathan Dove, whose music-theatre works to date have been so successful you could say they’ve passed into repertoire, Itch is not a piece about bodily discomfort but an adventure story about a teenage scientist (burdened with the name Itchingham) on a mission to save the world. Think Harry Potter with wizardry replaced by the periodic table. Could be interesting, definitely an Event. Runs July 22-Aug 4. operahollandpark.com

• More modestly, north London’s own Hampstead Garden Opera has a concert of arias and ensembles given by young singers at St Michael’s Highgate, July 22, themed around love and war – which leaves you plenty of scope, operatically. hgo.org.uk

• Otherwise, it’s week two of the Proms – which Radio 3 is trumpeting right now with such vigour it could almost make you think that people inside the Corporation are worried about the future of the whole enterprise and desperate to make the most of it.

That said, there are things worth trumpeting – and they come this week with visiting bands from the regions. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are in residence for two nights, with a big, traditional Beethoven 9th on July 23 and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony on July 24.

The Halle Orchestra arrive from Manchester on July 26 with Shostakovich and Rachmaninov under the baton of its soon-to-retire music director (and Highgate resident) Mark Elder. And the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra bring Carl Orff’s robust warhorse of an oratorio Carmina Burana on July 27, alongside Stravinsky’s more austerely ceremonial Symphony of Psalms. If you can’t get to the Albert Hall, everything broadcasts live on Radio 3. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms