Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom started life as a short stage play in 1984, drawing on its creator’s own experiences in the heady world of amateur ballroom dancing. That the iconic 1992 film exists at all is something of a miracle; production funding was scarce and no distributor was willing to screen it until it was accepted for the 1992 Cannes Festival. Strictly Ballroom is still an intoxicating viewing experience: a visually arresting and upbeat modern fairy tale, smartly cast and superbly performed.

"That cursed mist" may hide the French from the crew of the HMS Indomitable and cause far more deadly damage to moral certainty. But clarity and strength are the assets of Orpha Phelan's new production for Opera North: no gimmicks, superb company work and three principals for the battle of good and evil all equal to their dramatic challenges at a level I haven't seen for decades.

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s standard of playing is consistently impressive, so much so that it’s easy to forget that the ensemble is effectively reconstituted from scratch each autumn. Last night’s fresh incarnation, deftly conducted by Nicholas Collon, sounded as if they’d been playing together for decades, though without any sense of complacency which that might bring. When you’ve 163 teenagers squeezed onto a stage, the worry is that the details will get lost in a blurry soup of sound. But no; this account of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony was immaculate.

The few ensemble lapses and moments of insecurity during the first half of this concert had nothing to do with Richard Farnes’s conducting, or with the playing of an augmented Orchestra of Opera North. It’s in rude health; Farnes has refined and deepened the orchestra’s string sound, and the winds and brass are world-class.

We’ve been spoilt over the past few summers in Leeds; Opera North’s semi-staged Ring has been a triumph, and the whole cycle will be performed complete in June 2016. To fill the Town Hall in 2015 we’ve got concert performances of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. You have to commend the decision taken to play the work straight through without any intermissions, though it’s a bit of a slog in places; much of Act 2 feels dramatically inert. By contrast, Götterdämmerung’s five hours pass in the blink of an eye.

Nielsen: Symphonies 2 and 6 Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo (BIS)

You’ve booked the iconic Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and their charismatic chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek to do a whistle-stop UK tour. Hoorah. But what do you get them to play? The mind boggles with programming possibilities. A symphony by Martinů? Janáček’s Taras Bulba? Suk’s Asrael? Naah – what you do, inevitably, is look at the Classic FM Hall of Fame and ask them to perform The Lark Ascending and the Bruch G minor Concerto.

The good news first: director Christopher Alden’s new production of Gianni Schicchi is quite brilliant, and one of the funniest, cleverest things you’ll see in an opera house. Puccini’s taut one-acter is difficult to mess up, but it takes some skill to present it this well. Alden’s version is full of pleasures. Like Rhys Gannon’s stroppy young Gheradino, who spends most of the action wearing headphones and playing on an iPad. Choreographer Tim Claydon’s mute, acrobatic Buoso Donati leaves this earth with some reluctance, his ghost continuing to haunt the stage.

By the time I reached “Coming Home” - the second track on Kaiser Chiefs’ fifth album, and the band’s "comeback" single - I was predicting not a riot exactly, but certainly a few snide comments below re: my knowledge of the Leeds lads’ back catalogue.

Middle-period Mahler can be hair-raising enough under normal circumstances. In this performance of the Fifth Symphony, the angst and intensity dials had been turned up to 11. Every orchestral colour shone with greater intensity, and each change in dynamics registered with piercing clarity. Which could only mean that this year's freshly reconstituted National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain were giving their first concert of the season.