Long before the curtain rose on this soapy operatic tale of power and poison, one big question loomed: could director Paul Curran, could anyone, bring Rimsky-Korsakov's sweet, doomed and very Russian bride to convincing life? The music's mostly strong, and unusually singer-friendly for this composer; the historically dodgy plot's patchy, but not inimical to resetting in the queasy milieu of the new Russian rich. Given the bloodstained start in a swish Moscow restaurant, I thought Curran could be on to something, but by the end of the evening it was just a tawdry old melodrama dressed up in flashy suits.

The Royal Opera House's 2011-12 season takes place under the shadow of a 15 per cent cut in public funding and the looming London Olympics. There are 12 ballet bills and 18 opera nights, including one new opera and two new short ballets.

The Royal Opera has announced that Kasper Holten, artistic director of the Royal Danish Opera, has been appointed Director of Opera at Covent Garden, to succeed Elaine Padmore at the end of this season.

For those in the know, Sergei Polunin has been marked out as “the one to watch” from his schooldays. Since he won the Prix de Lausanne in 2006 and joined the Royal Ballet the following year, he has been “the next big thing”. Well, I’m here to tell you, after last night’s performance of Rhapsody, he is not the next big thing. He is the big thing now.

Some ballets are drugs in themselves - you’re under their sway no matter what the performance. Other ballets need drugs to help. This new Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is definitely of the second kind, a very odd, very shallow, very bright and brilliantly bold staging, that makes no sense, that offers no depth, but which I suspect would be a blast if one were slightly stoned. But to slip a complimentary spliff under the programme's whirligig cover would take it out of the small-children Christmas market that I guess this enterprise is to occupy with the same massive box-office success as the cod-Ashton animalfest Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Charlotte MacMillan took photographs of the first new full-length ballet at The Royal Ballet for 16 years, Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which premiered last night at the Royal Opera House. Designs are by Bob Crowley, lighting by Natasha Katz, projection design by Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington. Music by Joby Talbot, scenario by Nicholas Wright. See theartsdesk's review of last night's world premiere.

Rumour has it that Snoop Dogg may be serenading the royals there in a couple of months' time, but this afternoon it was the most agile, even and full soprano voice of all which rang from the vaulting of Westminster Abbey. Thanks to the noble co-operation of the Royal Opera House - serving up its orchestra and music director, Antonio Pappano - the Australian High Commission and the Australian Music Foundation, we celebrated the life and works of Dame Joan Sutherland in the high, orchestrated style which only this kind of event could have done full justice.

From Rufus Wainwright's first album, which featured the dirgey "Damned Ladies" wherein he sings to Desdemona and "brown-eyed Tosca", his operatic musical tendencies - indeed, his whole operatic self-conception - have never been latent. He has always been a diva trapped in mortal form.

As arts cuts announced today start to bite, few people are aware that the Royal Opera House pays its two top people more than £630,000 and nearly £400,000 each. Although Covent Garden is refusing to identify them, it is likely that they are chief executive Lord Hall and music director Antonio Pappano. But they are not likely to have to sacrifice their earnings even while smaller arts organisations fold.

Christmas has come early to the Royal Opera House this year. Without a single shout of “He’s behind you!” or even an implausibly-uddered dancing cow, pantomime season is well and truly underway in the form of The Duenna – a corset-straining, britches-splitting, liquor-quaffing delight of a comedy. All of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s familiar wit and whimsy are here, and if they frequently need to pause and sprawl themselves out upon a comfortable melody, then so much the better. What a pity then that the music-making itself is often so uncertain.