It’s one of the ironies of life and art that Prokofiev’s tenderest and most romantic opera was composed at a time when he was abandoning his wife in favour of a Moscow literature student half his age. Betrothal in a Monastery is a setting in Russian of an opera libretto by Sheridan about the attempt of a Spanish grandee to marry off his young daughter to an elderly fish merchant. Like most comic operas, and some not so comic, it’s set in Seville; the wife Prokofiev was walking out on was Spanish.

Comparisons, even on paper, between two season openers from London orchestras could hardly have been more instructive. I didn’t attend Valery Gergiev’s London Symphony Orchestra concert last week, for reasons several times outlined on theartsdesk. But quite apart from the fact that Gergiev and his court pianist Denis Matsuev are active supporters of Putin's “Might is Right” campaign in the Ukraine – a situation which tens of thousands of Muscovites are beginning to challenge – Matsuev is also the worst of barnstormers.

It sure feels like longer than three weeks since the Mariinsky rolled into town – at least if you’re one of London’s ballet fans. Non-balletomanes might be wondering whether the feverish intensity with which the company’s doings are followed, its form analysed, its health diagnosed, is disproportionate, a case of collective hysteria stoked by cultural stereotypes about Russians and the absence of other ballet offerings in late summer.

After the European Union Youth Orchestra hit unsurpassable heights last week, the Proms plateau of excellence remained available to another youth carnival of weird and wonderful 20^th century monsters.

One of the reasons I always tell ballet sceptics to give Romeo and Juliet a go is that any production with halfway decent lovers and a vaguely competent rendition of Prokofiev’s score should convince them that this art form isn’t just about swans and sugar plums.

The best that you can usually expect from an interview is that it takes off from stock beginnings in spontaneous and unexpected directions. This one was rather exciting from the start: the end of a day in the life of a new role, Puccini's good-time girl Manon Lescaut, for lyric-dramatic soprano Kristine Opolais.

What a difference a change of cast can make to a show. On Wednesday night I saw Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta as the titular lovers in English National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Albert Hall (see below for that review). Last night it was the turn of ENB’s other Royal Ballet emigrée, Alina Cojocaru, and guest star Friedemann Vogel of Stuttgart Ballet.

Am I alone in a readiness to sacrifice all four Rachmaninov piano concertos – though maybe not the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – in favour of the second sets of Preludes and Études-Tableaux? Probably not, after last night, when Nikolay Lugansky unfurled the 13 Op. 32 Preludes as one discombobulating symphonic cosmos. This is probably as close as we can come today to being in the presence of Rachmaninov himself, the greatest recorded pianist I know.

Watching The Royal Ballet’s The Winter’s Tale a few weeks ago, I was struck by the quasi-absurdity of adapting the Bard for dance - a thought numerous choreographers must have encountered while toying with the idea. The complexity of Shakespeare’s plots and characters, and the importance of his linguistic intricacy has meant that relatively few have dared to take on the task and even fewer have succeeded in creating lasting adaptations.