In performing three successive operas based on Beaumarchais’s Figaro plays, Welsh National Opera’s idea is to create a binge-watchable operatic box set.

David Pountney has compared it to Downton Abbey. Judging from Sam Brown’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, it’s more like Little Britain.

There are silly walks, and sillier voices. Men in frocks whack each other with rolling pins and men in suits accidentally sit on hypodermic needles. There are fart jokes. And Basilio’s floppy, leg-humping dog repeatedly upstages the entire cast. Well, if you can’t do opera as panto at the Birmingham Hippodrome , where can you?

I’ve genuinely never heard an audience laughing so much in an opera buffa. Kelley Rourke’s brisk and irreverent new English translation had a lot to do with that, as did Sue Blane’s cartoon-like costumes. Only Ralph Koltai’s grungy sets struck a jarring note.

So if this wasn’t a night for those who believe Rossini has more to offer than gags, the cast threw themselves at it headfirst. Nicholas Lester was an engaging Figaro, complete with bulletproof Robbie Rotten quiff, and Claire Booth played Rosina as a thigh-flashing glamourpuss.

But this wasn’t an evening for the canary-fanciers either, and while Andrew Shore’s Bartolo and Richard Wiegold’s Basilio were both handsomely sung, I’ve heard more seductive Almavivas than Nico Darmanin. Of course they didn’t have to wear a man-size Boy Scout uniform, or hop about the stage with their trousers round their ankles.

All wonderfully silly, then. For the crazy logic of farce to click into gear, though, it really needs to be played straight – and played tight. Ever so slightly, this sagged, with woolly ensemble choreography and a bouncy, affectionate performance from conductor James Southall that glowed but somehow never quite sparkled.

It’d be great to see this team in Gilbert and Sullivan. In Rossini I was never quite sure if we were laughing with the composer or at him.