Don’t make the mistake of missing this. This is a seriously happy show from Midland Opera, and Sarah Helsby-Hughes’ imaginative and lively direction of Donizetti’s charming tale of love just needing a little nudge is delightful.

She sets it in the context of a Dad’s Army cricket match close to one of the many wartime airfields in the South-east, and it almost entirely works. There are only two problems: at one point we come dangerously close to the world of Britten’s hapless Albert Herring, and there are moments in her own generally brilliant translation where we stray disturbingly far from the Italian original.

Never mind. Performing values are consistently high in this production, beginning with a chorus (if very occasionally underpowered) lively and characterful, the excellent Queens Park Sinfonia adept in conductor James Longstaffe’s own orchestral reduction, and set and costume design both pretty and resourceful.

Lorraine Payne is tremendous as the outwardly cool landowner Adina. She has a well-formed, compact soubrette soprano which she unleashes into other realms in her great final aria. Perhaps now she should take on heavier roles, such as Puccini’s Madam Butterfly (she would certainly look the part).

As the lovelorn Nemorino Alexander Aldren was almost superb, his tones full and rich, his phrasing beautifully-shaped. But he must lose his ventriloquist-dummy body-language before he can take on the greater stage his talent deserves.

Ian McFarlane was scarcely the popstar-like Belcore over whom all the women drool, but had a sympathetic presence, and Clive Thursfield, despite fuzzy vocal timbres, won us all over as the quack Dr Dulcamara, deft in patter and engagingly wide-boyish (I hope Strictly’s Len Goodman won’t mind the fact that I was constantly reminded of that genial gentleman).

Runs until Saturday.