Few performances have hit me harder than Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Jenůfa at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2004. One that did, though, was the touring production of the same show – performed this time last year with a different cast, orchestra and conductor, all of them ostensibly ‘lesser’ than their Festival counterparts. At the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, Jenůfa had more visceral intensity and naturally-breathed musicianship than I’ve ever heard it invested with before.

And that wasn’t a one-off. I was back in Plymouth two weeks ago, where Robert Carson’s production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea had an elegant, even-contoured beauty that all the excitement of the 2008 Festival’s big names (and ‘big’ conducting from Emmanuelle Haïm) largely bypassed. The 15 instrumentalists were raised to just below stage level, half of them facing the singers and all of them playing with delicious enthusiasm, lightness and clarity. Perhaps it was that – a rare feeling of company cohesion – that lay behind the evening’s delicate triumph. 

I was disappointed to miss Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne this summer but given the dramaturgical experience in Plymouth – the night after Poppea – that regret was eased somewhat. Jonathan Kent’s production struck me as directionless and downright ugly. The sets – daubed with arches in clumsy false perspective – were apparently a third bigger at Glyndebourne. So at least the touring show was a third less irritating to look at.

Mercifully Glyndebourne pulled off a series of masterstrokes when it came to casting the touring Don G. In Plymouth’s shallow, concrete auditorium the singing met the ear with as much technical assurance, dramatic elasticity and ear-buzzing power as you could wish for. The cast might not have born the strongest imprint of directorial vision, but they looked and sounded the part and were eager to please. Conductor Jakub Hrůsa presided over the most orchestrally astute Don G I’ve heard live.

Peter Hall’s La Cenerentola was first seen at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2005. I was there, and I was also bored stiff. It looked like an amalgamation of every lazy domestic opera buffa production I’d ever seen. In Plymouth on day 3, even if it didn’t strike me as the most mind-nourishing piece, at least I got the point of it.

Sandwiched between Matthew Bourne and the family pantomime, this was one of three Cinderella treatments to be gracing the Plymouth stage in the space of six weeks. Perhaps it worked because the audience accepted the piece for the story it told, and because the cast weren’t afraid to have some fun with it.

I feel sure, too, that some layers of affected detail had been stripped out since 2005. Dramatically and visually it felt more clear-cut: Jonathan Veira stole the show as Don Magnifico, and he made the evening pivot on the moment Cinderella offered him her forgiveness. In a narrative sense, it was simple and beautiful.

There’s plenty about the Glyndebourne Festival you can’t replicate (and much I personally wouldn’t want to). But you can, now and then, get a better deal theatrically from the tour’s more focussed stagings. And with a lot less logistical faffing, too – especially as it’s rumoured next year’s tour might even graze the underside of London with a visit to Wimbledon.