Venue: Village Underground, London

It’s all about puppets at the moment, from War Horse to Madama Butterfly – even Studio Ghibli’s complicated cult film Princess Mononoke has had the puppet treatment – and the latest musical project to do the string thing, so to speak, is from the London Sinfonietta.

Under the title “Monteverdi Ballets”, Spitalfields Music Summer Festival presented a joint collaboration between the Early Opera Company and Avant Garde Dance. The challenge was to merge music and dance coming from two different artistic projects into a single unified product.

Two sisters, a knight, a miller, and a blind harpist. Such is the cast of Tony Harrison and Harrison Birtwistle's Bow Down, their 1977 music-theatre piece currently being toured around the UK by The Opera Group. It's an elemental, mythic piece, but also a testament to the endless capacity for novelty that old, grim folk tales like this have.