A promenade performance round London’s Holland Park of Will Todd’s opera for children must have been a delightful experience, as long as the weather was fine and the local peacocks kept quiet. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was an Opera Holland Park commission, by all accounts a popular success and now in its third year of performances.

Does it work on CD, too? Like most judicious entertainments for children, Todd’s opera is nimble on its feet, not outstaying its welcome (69 minutes) and relying on quick changes of mood, colour and content to stop young minds from wandering. An overture with echoes of a retro musical like Sondheim’s Follies sets the tone. Every number is different, ranging from soprano coloratura fireworks for a singing bottle (‘Drink me!’) to – by far the best – the Caterpillar’s ‘Wonderland Blues’, which Keel Watson turns into a showpiece cameo. Alice gets a solo number, ‘I flew high in my dreams’, which future X Factor contestants might want to keep in mind. Not much of it is original but it works effectively enough.

In her 150th-anniversary year, Lewis Carroll’s Alice seems to be everywhere. Todd’s fun opera for children seems to me more of a success on its own terms than Unsuk Chin’s intricate opera for adults, though neither gets near to capturing the unique humour and intellectual sleight of hand of the original. Todd’s libretto, written by Maggie Gottlieb, reads like a keen-to-please modern schoolbook – even down to Humpty Dumpty talking about 11 Plus and SATS. The cast, headed by Fflur Wyn as Alice, and orchestra, conducted by Matthew Waldren, put on a good show. The young audience no doubt enjoyed the theatrical colour and verve of it, but isn’t that the point? A DVD might have shown more vividly what made Todd’s opera a hit.