Both events are now very much underway.

The Northern Lights have been switched on and the Festival opera Le Grande Macabre, big in every sense – budget, ambition and scale – has opened. The ASO is in fine form with Ligeti’s challenging but often hypnotic score and the carnivalesque nature of its boisterous storyline – part medieval morality, Spanish surrealism, Jarry’s randomly absurdist Ubu and Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, it is a stew of avant garde references and turbulent comedy, grotesquery and pathos.

The central stage figure in Alfons Flores’ astonishing decor – the gigantic naked woman with her often illuminated eyes and lascivious lolling tongue – is an extraordinary and relentless image. Projected upon with Bosch and Breughel-like images of figures in hell, of comet illuminations, and even, poignantly, the skeleton beneath the vast flesh, it is the constant focus of our attention. Courtesy of the revolve we are also granted every aspect (and a view of every orifice !) as this macabre opera on mortality and the body unfolds with unexpected power but also playfulness.

The singers are outstanding – counter tenor Brian Asawa as Prince GoGo, Frode Olsen and Chris Merrit, as the ageing and ramshackle Astradamors and Piet the Pot, Ning Liang as (the somewhat misogynistically portrayed) Mescalina, Susanna Andersson, marvelous as Venus and the hypermanic Gepopo and Roderick Earle, as the ultimately foiled death figure Nekrotzar. The return to the Adelaide of the iconoclastic, unpredictably theatrical La Fura del Baus has created the 2010 festival’s first talking point.