In Scottish Opera’s programming of two very different comedic operas side by side this autumn, it’s a toss-up as to which has the sillier story. Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is all about wily duplicity as the means to an end, while Britten’s Albert Herring takes on more poignant innocence with its English rural society quirks and daftness. What they both have in common, however, is money playing a pivotal role in their plots and how it can, if you’ve got it, lead to a very different type of life.

Don Pasquale has more than plenty and nephew Ernesto is directly in line as first in the queue for inheritance. This is all potentially up for avuncular change though if he marries the love of his life, the poor young widow Norina rather than the wealthy match Pasquale has set up for him. Lies and pretence abound, making for some wonderfully well-timed funny moments between Pasquale and Norina, who disguises herself to become Sofronia and fakes getting married to the rich, old and generally unattractive Don.

Stepping in due to illness of the originally cast soprano, Simone Osborne took to the role of Norina/Sofronia as if it had been written for her. Stratospherically high notes never faltered with astonishing vocal control while sassily acting out both her characters completely convincingly. David Stout was likewise a naturally staged Pasquale, his unappealing and eventually quite pathetic personality paving the ground for delicious laughs pretty much all at his own (literal) expense.

At the same time, there’s an affectionate playfulness to creative team Barbe & Doucet’s 1960s Rome setting, which opens with sequences of photos and witty speech bubbles bringing the audience up to speed with the story. It’s intimate too, with Pasquale’s pensione in warm tones of ruby red and lines of endless washing filling out the stage. Tenors Filipe Manu, an impressive Ernesto, and Josef Jeongmeen Ahn as his obliging friend Doctor Malatesta, brought Italianate operatic style to Ruffino and Donizetti’s 180-year old libretto, with the Chorus appearing briefly, but classily, under the direction of conductor Stuart Stratford.

While the orchestra colourfully romped along in Don Pasquale, sometimes too loudly for those on stage above them, the Albert Herring instrumentalists gave a completely different perspective on how orchestra and singers can intertwine in a score as carefully crafted as Britten’s.

Just 13 of them, they were an ensemble of first-rate soloists from the company’s regular orchestra playing together under the baton of William Cole, making his Scottish Opera debut. On the evidence of this initial appearance, he’s one to watch out for on the Scottish music scene and international opera circuit.

The damsels of Suffolk’s Loxford village are too wayward to befit the title of May Queen, so the local committee decides to have a May King instead: the young, innocent greengrocer, Albert Herring, whose £25 prize buys a night in several pubs and the confidence to stand up to his domineering mum. In Daisy Evans’ truly delightful production, nostalgia is ever present, whether through the opera’s characters being caricatures of themselves or Kat Heath’s design which propels the work’s 1940s origins into the 1990s, complete with village-hall orange plastic stacking chairs, lurid blancmanges and soprano Susan Bullock’s Lady Billows as a she-who-must-be-obeyed cross between Margaret Thatcher and Hyacinth Bucket. Brilliantly cast across the piece, with Jane Monari’s Florence Pike a strong connecting thread, and Glen Cunningham an endearing Albert, it’s a show that has everyone smiling all the way home.

Don Pasquale (★★★★☆), Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 8, Sunday 10, Saturday 16 November; Albert Herring (★★★★★), Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 13 November; both reviewed at Theatre Royal, Glasgow.