I habitually skipped over Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl in my childhood fairy tale compendium because I couldn't bear the sadness (see also: The Happy Prince *sob*).

Is Jim Broadbent Britain’s best-loved actor? The slate of screen roles he’s accumulated over the years – this Christmas Carol is his return to theatre after a decade away – has surely given him a very special quality in the nation's consciousness, a combination of general benignity with more than a hint of absent-mindedness, an almost madcap bafflement at the world.

With its hybrid Romantic-kitschy plot, chocolate-advert Tchaikovksy tunes, and baggage of obligatory Christmas cheer, the Nutcracker is harder to get right than you might think if you've only ever seen Sir Peter Wright's Royal Ballet version, now over 30 years old and still practically perfect in every way.

Much of what follows was included in the 25th anniversary programme for Jonathan Miller’s legendary production of The Mikado at English National Opera. And the show goes on, still dazzling on each curtain-up thanks to the undated feat of the late Stefanos Laziridis’ sets and Sue Blane’s costumes, its routines absolutely classic on its 14th revival. On 6 December it marked its 200th performance, so there’s good reason to wheel out this celebration of sundry Mikados again.

You can forgive a certain amount of scepticism. After his now-infamous Royal Opera debut earlier this year, directing a Guillaume Tell that was heavy on concept and light on just about everything else, Damiano Michieletto returns for a Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci that sounded as though it might go the same way. In the flesh, however – and what work-calloused, life-blasted verismo flesh it is too – the production is thoughtful and instinctively theatrical – as good a new show from the company as we’ve seen all year.

One of the joys about this stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days is the contrast between its phlegmatic hero Phileas Fogg, who deals with everything in terms of precision and logic, and the picaresque confusion of his journey. Fogg (Robert Portal) has the habit of laying down portentous truths in an attempt to mediate the scampering mix-ups that he encounters at every stage. One such aperçu, “A well-used minimum suffices for anything,” serves nicely as a verdict on Lucy Bailey’s energetic, engaging production.

Reputations and popularity rise and fall and rise again in cycles, and so with the redoubtable Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879). Now considered one of the finest photographers ever, she was an amateur gifted with incredible tenacity, intellectual and physical energy, and stamina. Stubborn and ambitious, for her class and gender she was unusually interested in business. She sold her work, which indeed she copyrighted, through the printsellers Colnaghi’s, and she was always experimenting and thinking of ways to promote her achievement.

There are some wonderful things in this exhibition, and that’s no surprise: the British Empire endured for over 500 years and at its peak extended across a quarter of the world’s land mass. Preparing an exhibition of corresponding reach must have involved considering a vast range of objects, but choosing well is another matter entirely.

It does not seem like 12 years since the organ in the Usher Hall was restored to full working order. That may be because, in the minds of many Edinburghers, the recent years of untroubled service are still eclipsed by the many decades in which Norman and Beard’s monumental instrument sat silent, reproaching the City Fathers for their parsimony. Another reason, of course, is that in common with most concert hall organs, it is only infrequently called upon by the standard orchestral repertoire to provide that magical extra ingredient in the ensemble.

“High Spirits” is a multi-layered title: the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was himself a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, continually using up his material assets in such pursuits. His high spirits extended to the Georgian society he satirised with such robust good humour; high society and even low society attracted his interests, while he also expended enormous energy detailing political and sexual intrigues.