Could there be a more versatile group of musicians than those of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House? Ballet one day, opera the next – or, in the case of last night’s programme featuring The Dream and Song of the Earth – both, one after the other.

This was the first time I’d seen Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, and it was a delight from start to finish. Based on Shakespeare’s play, it begins with Titania and Oberon arguing over the possession of a changeling boy, after which Oberon persuades Puck to help him teach Titania a lesson by plying her with a magic herb while she sleeps. On wakening, she falls in love with the first person she sees – who happens to be Bottom, transformed into an ass by Puck. After further meddling by Puck and Oberon, the two sets of lovers – Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius – are reunited, as are Titania and Oberon. It’s a silly romp, captured beautifully – and humorously – by Ashton, particularly in the scene when Titania – the adorable Roberta Marquez – dances with Bottom (a nimble, en pointe Bennet Gartside). The pas de deux between Titania and Oberon (the magnificent Steven McRae) was also a highlight.

But what of Mendelssohn’s music? It’s not an easy score to perform, beset by technical and tuning challenges. The Scherzo is notoriously difficult – why else would the flute solo be used as an orchestral excerpt in auditions? Yet the orchestra handled it all admirably, with a lightness of touch from the strings, effortless double-tonguing from the flute section, and pretty good tuning throughout. The London Oratory Junior Choir did a fine job from the pit, too.

To switch from that to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde – not strictly an opera, of course, but rather an orchestral song-cycle – is no mean feat. Kenneth MacMillan’s malleable, gravity-defying choreography uses the complete score, including singers (on this occasion, mezzo-soprano Katharine Goeldner and tenor Tom Randle, standing in for a sadly indisposed Toby Spence). Composed in 1908, Mahler’s is a complex work, drawing on eighth-century Chinese poems translated freely into German, and juxtaposing bucolic energy with a sense of anguished yearning. MacMillan – whose proposal in 1959 to set the work was rejected by the Royal Opera House Board, apparently because it was ‘a masterpiece that should not be touched’ – took his idea to John Cranko and his Stuttgart dancers, and it was here that the work was premiered in 1965.

At the heart of the ballet are themes of love, loss and renewal. The Messenger of Death, danced here by the agile Edward Watson, is a threatening presence but, as he leads the Woman (Leanne Benjamin) and the Man (Valeri Hristov) over the horizon in ‘The Farewell’, there is a sense of optimism, hope and eternal life.

The score is, like all Mahler, a challenge to perform. Author Gavin Plumley has written about the Chinese texts ‘provoking a new astringency within Mahler’s sound world’, with 'Der Abschied’ offering ‘a huge summation of what has gone before’. The overall orchestration is varied and intricate, the addition of tam-tam and harp echoing its Chinese origins. For the Royal Opera House Orchestra, there’s the added complication of accompanying soloists who are above them, on stage. For Barry Wordsworth and his musicians, however, it was all in a day’s work. This was impassioned music-making – and how apt that, when the final curtain call came, it was the orchestra that received the loudest cheer of all.