Henry Purcell, 1695, by John Closterman

SHAKESPEARE, these days, attracts biblical respect: the text is sacred and policed by scholars. But three centuries ago there was a cowboy licence to do what you liked with him, and one result was Purcell’s Fairy Queen: an elaborate singing /dancing spectacle that turns A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a sort of opera bearing only vague resemblance to the Bard’s original – though no one ought to mind because the end result is a complete if slightly off-the-wall joy.

Written in 1692, the score was lost until rediscovery in the early 20th century; and even now it doesn’t get too many stagings. So take note that HGO (aka Hampstead Garden Opera) has one at Jackson’s Lane, Highgate, running April 19-28. With young singers, a baroque band, an interesting take on the plot, and tunes that only a genius like Purcell could have imagined, it’s a diary date. hgo.org.uk

Brett Dean – Wigmore Hall [Bettina Stoess]

• Having bravely announced its intention to break free from Arts Council support (which thanks to the council’s unique combination of incompetence and tyranny has become more a burden than a benefit to many), the Wigmore Hall is firing on all guns right now. This week alone it offers pianists Nelson Goerner (April 19) and Alexandre Tharaud (April 22), baritone Roderick Williams (April 24) and vocal group Vox Luminis (April 25). But that’s not all. There’s also the Kathleen Ferrier singing competition (final April 26). And April 20 brings a whole day of music packaged around the work of celebrated Australian composer Brett Dean – with a morning piano recital by Benjamin Grosvenor, the Doric String Quartet in the afternoon, and Nash Ensemble at night. To be able to programme at this level and show the Arts Council the door is beyond impressive. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Also busy this week is conductor Graham Ross. As director of music at Clare College, Cambridge, he runs the choral services in chapel there. But he’s increasingly visible in the wider world. And on April 19 he conducts the BBC Singers at Cadogan Hall in a programme that combines voices with solo saxophone (Christian Forshaw) in something like the way the Hillard Ensemble used to do with Jan Garbarek. cadoganhall.com

For good measure the following day, April 20, Ross conducts the Haydn Chamber Orchestra at Christ Church, Highbury Grove, in works by Mozart and Emilie Mayer, the 19th-century German symphonist long overlooked but suddenly on everybody’s radar. hco.org.uk

• Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is back at the Royal Opera House April 19-May 18, in Katie Mitchell’s gothic-horror staging that, apart from being scary, tells the story from a feminist perspective. But there’s also something new in the downstairs Linbury Theatre: a double-bill of operas by Martinů and John Harbison that fit well together, at least in terms of their narratives. The Martinů is a surreal fantasy, Larmes de couteau, in which a girl loves two men: only problem, one of them is hanged, the other is Satan. The Harbison, Full Moon in March, has a man lose his head, literally, for love of a virgin queen. Sounds like Turandot, but actually adapted from a play by Yeats. April 26-May 4. roh.org.uk