The Prince is at death’s door. Lying in bed with a drip feeding into his arm, he’s surrounded by white-coated doctors, whose expressions make it plain that the end is nigh. Then one of the doctors pipes up: “Could festivities save him? He’ll recover if he laughs”.Thus Prokofiev, basing his text on a comedy by Carlo Gozzi, sets up a confrontation between comedy and “a performance in which you find characters hurling themselves from windows or turrets”, as one of Gozzi’s original characters describes dark tragedy. It could also be that Prokofiev was poking fun at the whole world of grand opera, with its giant-scale emotions, and melodies.

Opportunities to let the imagination rip are endless. In this new Grange Park production, David Fielding is both director and designer, and he starts quite modestly, if unsuccessfully — a dancing banana, and a pair of jousting knights totally fail to bring even the faintest flicker of a smile to the Prince’s face. It’s time to up the ante, and Fielding does so to hilarious effect, until the Prince produces one of the most mellifluous, sustained laughs I have ever heard. By now wearing a vivid orange (of course) suit, he is finally whisked away in a revolving Dr Who Tardis.

If Prokofiev provides plenty of opportunities for free range visual effects, musically he does much of the work himself. Unlike his often grindingly repetitive Romeo and Juliet, the Oranges score is full of ever-changing wit and invention, as conductor Leo Hussain and the English Chamber Orchestra make plain. Both chorus and solo singing are uniformly crisp and clean — although the opera is sung in French, the sound is remarkably Russian. Strong solo performances come from Clive Bayley (the King), Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (the Prince), Anne-Marie Owens (Princess Clarice), Henry Waddington (Leandre), Wynne Evans, (Trouffaldino), and Quentin Hayes (Pantalon). Grange Park has served Prokofiev well, both visually and musically.

Further performances are tonight, and on Saturday, next Thursday and on Sunday, July 4. Box office: 01962 737366.