Helen Charlston [Matthew Johnson]

IT’S unlikely that you’ve ever lost sleep wondering what Queen Victoria’s favourite opera was. But for the record, it was Bellini’s I Puritani (The Puritans) which, despite royal enthusiasm, went on to fall out of fashion and hasn’t played Covent Garden for decades – until now, when it returns in a new Richard Jones production running June 30-July 19.
One thing that will have attracted the Queen is that it’s a yarn about English history.

Charles I and Cromwell are at war. And as swords clash, a puritan girl falls in love with a cavalier soldier: yes, another Romeo & Juliet affair, although this time the girl goes mad (as happens in bel canto operas) and there’s a happy ending courtesy of Cromwell.
It is, of course, silly. But Richard Jones is the right sort of director to deal with that. And the heroine – a role famously championed by Joan Sutherland in the 1960s – is played here by Lisette Oropesa, who sang it last year in New York and is making it her own. All of which is promising. rbo.org.uk

• More epic opera – though done here in concert, without staging – from the LSO, July 1 at the Barbican, when Tony Pappano conducts Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Starts at 5pm. But if that’s a problem, it repeats July 12. barbican.org.uk

• It’s no small thing for an ensemble to flourish for half a century as Hampstead Chamber Choir has done. And it marks its 50th birthday with a concert at Hampstead Parish Church, June 27, that includes a special commission called London from Hampstead Heath.

A cantata for voices, brass & percussion, it’s been written by Robert Allan: a Scottish-born composer/pianist based in London, who has been HCC’s regular accompanist for the past three years. So he knows what he’s writing for. And he knows something of Hampstead Heath, having compiled his text from poets who either wrote about it or had some connection.

Wordsworth features, with verse about the view from Parliament Hill. But less expected is Enid Blyton, with a poem about fairies in the sky that bears testament to the fact that the world’s most famous children’s author died in NW3.

These days she’s no longer valued as she used to be, but maybe she improves with music. Also on the programme, Rutter and Vaughan Williams. hampsteadchamberchoir.org

• One of the most spectacular choral works in English repertoire is Tallis’s Spem in Alium, written for 40 independent voices and sounding like sludge unless it’s done with forensic clarity – which you can hope for when the excellent Temple Singers do it at Temple Church, July 2, alongside modern works by Tavener and Whitacre. templemusic.org

• Up in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the Proms at St Jude’s round off with jazz violinist Lizzie Ball celebrating the Great American Songbook, July 4, and a Last Night event, July 5, in which the stellar mezzo Helen Charlston sings Elgar’s Sea Pictures, plus arias by Mozart and Handel. The Purcell School Orchestra accompanies. And also on the programme is an overture by one of the most interesting female composers recently rescued from oblivion, Doreen Carwithen. A rousing send-off for the season. Flags will doubtless wave. promsatstjudes.org.uk