It is part of the fun, and the intention, of Music of the Spheres' re-interpretation of Bach's Coffee Cantata as The Coffee Opera that at least some of the audience in the CCA were there for a coffee, a chat and a bite to eat rather than a three-course chamber opera.

At the first performance this week (it is repeated at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Edinburgh's Royal Mile on Monday evening and at the CCA in Glasgow on Tuesday) no-one complained about the entertaining intervention into their evening. A large part of the joke, of course, is that the new fashion for coffee that Johann Sebastian and his librettist were satirising in the 1730s is not a million miles from the hipster howffs frequented by those who would never darken the doors of Starbucks, and the show would work much less well in a conventional theatre space.

It is the work of a company established by students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Glasgow - with considerable professional musicianship assisting the work of the emerging artists - and the presentation of the piece is all youthful invention and enthusiasm. A few days previously an even younger company of opera-makers from Scottish Opera's Connect project presented a double bill of work by Jonathan Dove and Stephen Deazley in the rather less central, newish Websters' Theatre in the West End, which Mary Brennan reviewed in last Monday's Herald. The annual Connect showing has emerged from the privacy of Scottish Opera's Eddington Street rehearsal rooms where I first saw the young company, but I bet many of their audience were still proud family members. Our national company certainly does work that cannot be damned with the tired charge of elitism often levelled at opera, but it does not exactly go out of its way to sell it to a wider public.

As foreseen in this column a fortnight ago, Scottish Opera's new music director has been revealed to be Stuart Stratford, who conducted the recent production of Janacek's Jenufa. Stratford was introduced to the press last week in the top floor of the immaculately finished upper floor of the new foyer extension of the Theatre Royal, which is, of course, owned by the company. Much of what he was saying, however, had little to do with the presentation of opera in such a bespoke facility. His other regular gig is for the summer season at Holland Park, which might be in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but is a canopied outdoor arena and boasts of its outreach work and the availability of cheap and even free tickets to those who cannot afford the £75 top price. Even more interestingly, he referred to his work with director Graham Vick and the Birmingham Opera Company, which follows the "without walls" ethos of the National Theatre of Scotland and presents large scale site-specific work in disused industrial premises and parks, with community cast participation. He enthused about "exploring different avenues beyond the Theatre Royal" and mentioned the 5:15 chamber opera project and Kally Lloyd-Jones's staging of the Brecht/Weill Seven Deadly Sins as important precedents. Those with even longer memories might add Scottish Opera's memorable Turn of the Screw at Tramway, and even recall that Graham Vick was something of an enfant terrible at Scottish Opera in his 20s, whose occasional return might be intriguing. Although his mother is Scottish, Stratford admits he barely knows his new terrain and will be touring with wife and young son this summer in a campervan to amend that. Let's hope he finds some bold new opera locations.