There comes a time in one's life when instead of switching channels when Gardeners' Question Time starts on BBC Radio 4, you find yourself soothed by discussions of wintersweet, sawfly and lousewort. Devotees of the programme will know of Iford Manor because of its garden, designed by Harold Peto to the Italian model, its terraces heavy with wisteria, its cloisters peppered with statuary from long abandoned churches. For those of us who can kill a pot of basil with a single glance, it hosts the most enchanting of the summer festivals, Iford Arts.

The first thing to note in Shemer's beautifully measured Goldberg Variations is the pitch of his Franco-Flemish harpsichord, a whole tone lower than modern concert pitch.

A concert curated and conducted by Oliver Knussen has as much interest as a new piece by this most reclusive and original of British composers. And Prom 26 – whose works he seems to have chosen because they reflect a fastidious control of detail equal to his own – allowed things which are not normally juxtaposed to shed fresh light on each other.

Carlos Acosta is a generous host. Classical Selection, a programme celebrating the ballet star’s 40th birthday, is much more substantial than most galas. Looking back over his own career, Acosta also makes the most of his colleagues from The Royal Ballet. It’s a lavish but surprisingly intimate evening, with superb dancing, live music and a friendly sense of scale.

The Proms may never be the same again after the extraordinary heights achieved by the concert performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle on almost consecutive nights last week as the composer intended.

The Proms’ Ring has reached episode three: Siegfried, the one where a fearless beefcake falls in love with his aunt. After the incestuous passions of Die Walküre it doesn’t seem so risqué. Its five-hour span moves from darkest foreboding to love music intense almost to the point of insanity, which Justin Way’s semi-staging matched by flooding the whole auditorium with pinky-gold light.

The first British staging since 1926 of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's mafiosi opera takes the crown for lurid incident and spectacle

Percussionist Kuniko Kato completes her survey of Steve Reich's counterpoint pieces with "New York Counterpoint", arranged for the marimba with his blessing.

The Proms’ Ring has reached episode three: Siegfried, the one where a fearless beefcake falls in love with his aunt. After the incestuous passions of Die Walküre it doesn’t seem so risqué. Its five-hour span moves from darkest foreboding to love music intense almost to the point of insanity, which Justin Way’s semi-staging matched by flooding the whole auditorium with pinky-gold light.

The action is grittier, the stakes (and skirts) raised higher, and the orchestral noises louder than anything else of its time: if Puccini’s realist operas are verismo then Wolf-Ferrari’s 1911 I gioielli della Madonna is verissimo.

Very occasionally you are lucky enough to encounter a performance in which a sort of mystical transformation takes place: when the music and the way it is performed simply embody the emotion that underlies it.

For a Proms audience chock-a-block with enthusiasts determined not to be distracted by Royal baby news or excessive heat, Daniel Barenboim took the Proms podium to open Das Rheingold – the first opera in the Proms’ hungrily-anticipated, first-ever Ring cycle. Moments later, that spacious E flat build-up was immersing us in some seriously luxurious Wagnerian waters.

Prom 10 – Lisiecki, Santa Cecilia, Pappano (****)

Prom 11 – Ex Cathedra, Skidmore (*****)

Most ‘children’s operas’ are not really that at all, but Holland Park Opera – as its general manager has explained in these columns – is aiming its “Alice” squarely at the youthful end of the market. The background of its composer Will Todd is suitably eclectic, ranging from a jazz Mass, to oratorios, to an anthem for last year’s royal diamond jubilee; its designer Leslie Travers’s most recent exploit was the inspired staging of the Aldeburgh “Grimes on the Beach”; conducting and direction are by Martin Duncan and Stuart Stratford, versatile operators both.

One of the things the Proms can do is showcase youth orchestras, and Prom 13 was given over to the newly-formed National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, all aged between 16 and 19.