If you want your audiences to laugh, make sure they understand the jokes. English Touring Opera wisely sings its latest offerings in English. It could hardly do otherwise with Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale absolutely demand performance in the vernacular.

That is especially true of Don Pasquale. With its disguises, dreamy young lovers and randy old goat, its humour seems pale at the best of times, but David Parry’s witty translation does all it can to help.

William Oldroyd’s production adds some japes of its own, the most eye-catching of which is making Don Pasquale a vain and temperamental Edwardian conductor.

Although that allows for a good joke to start the evening, it hardly transforms the drama. What makes a real difference is the singers’ commitment to timing and text, particularly in the case of Owen Gilhooly as the wily fixer Malatesta.

Keel Watson blusters mightily as Pasquale, but Nicholas Sharratt, strained by Donizetti’s punishing high notes, can do little with the feckless drip that is Ernesto.

He, like Pasquale, is mere fodder for Mary O’Sullivan’s Norina, sharp as a razor and twice as deadly.

Touring until 29 May. Information: www.englishtouringopera.org.uk