The University Opera Society’s annual ‘mainshow’ is as much a part of  Cambridge’s cultural furniture as The Footlights Panto, Carols from King’s and The Marlowe Society’s big Shakespeare outing. CUOS has been producing these annual spectacles for over 40 years. But this term marks a change: by the end of Lent, West Road’s Concert Hall will have been transformed into an opera house, complete with proscenium arch, orchestra pit and stage, for not one but two full-scale opera productions. Last week a rammed house greeted the Hogarthian caricatures of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress for bearded ladies, brothels and bedlam; and next week will see the opening of opera-house stock favourite, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.

Looking back over Cambridge’s operatic endeavours of the past year-or-so, it’s perhaps easy to forget just how operatically spoilt we are. Recent highlights have included brand-new opera in the zoology museum; Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set at Glastonbury; an opera set on a ship and sung between the balconies of Great St. Mary’s; and Debussy’s fiendish symbolist number Pelleas et Melisande, bathed in blue light at West Road.

No other university can boast such opera-tions in the numbers, scale or quality that we’ve become used to. Granted, no one has (yet) tackled Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and as far as I’m aware there are no potential Brunnhildes in our ranks; but it is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the opera ‘scene’ here is mighty impressive; though our Chiltern neighbours disagree. And casting is served very well indeed. With 29 colleges offering choral scholarships to singing undergraduates, that’s around 696 singers alone, not to mention all of those songbirds whose boats aren’t rocked by the institutions of chapel and choir - Cambridge really is the (intelligent) singer’s playground. Two operas opening within two weeks of one another have managed to fill 20-something principal roles, not to mention bulging choruses.

And the proof really is in the pudding. While the press continually lauds Cambridge’s acting dynasty, with Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie and Rebecca Hall giving hope to many a budding fresher thesp, Cambridge’s long list of opera alumni is just as - if not more - impressive. There’s Simon Keenlyside, a favourite of seasonnaires at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden, who trod the boards in a previous CUOS production of Figaro as the lecherous Count, tenors Allan Clayton and Mark Padmore and the star of Kenneth Brannagh’s film adaptation of The Magic Flute, Amy Carson. The list could go on and on.

With three of the 2011 Figaro’s leads off to take up places on postgraduate vocal courses at music conservatoires next year, and many of the rest with this path in their sights, you may well be watching opera stars of tomorrow on the West Road stage next week. In fact, you’re probably more likely to see future prima madonnas in Cambridge’s operatic productions than in an average ADC main show.

But opera suffers from a certain reputation. Fat ladies, elitism and eye-watering ticket prices have done little to encourage the interest of new audiences. Opera needs new fans, and badly. The ‘Met’, as aficionados know it, provides a zimmer-frame room for its elderly clientele during performances. Demonstrating that opera is a lively, exhilarating and captivating art form and experience is difficult, though Carmen Elektra and Shadwell Opera, both begun by Cambridge students and both now off to London, have begun to chip away at the crusty image.

Happily, Figaro exemplifies everything that’s good about opera. For starters, it’s fun - Downton Abbey meets Upstairs/Downstairs, with a bit of Gosford Park thrown in for good measure. Add to that mix the Berlusconi-esque figure of the lecherous Count, lots of groping and a wedding almost as high-profile as Wills and Kate’s, not to forget some of the most sumptuous music ever written. You’ll recognize bits as soundtracks to countless commercials and films –most recently, the overture cured Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. As Figaro director Imogen Tedbury says: “This is the opera that gets everyone into opera.” Plus it’s being performed in a racy English translation and, in the unlikely event that you get bored, I’m told there’s a lot of bottom-pinching and breast-fondling. The set must be one of the most ambitious Cambridge has seen in a long while. Apparently it has been designed to ensure that even those in the worst seats can see everything – so long, ‘restricted views’.

Sneaking into a rehearsal run two weeks before opening night, the production already smacked of professionalism – from the singing, to the rehearsal conduct (I was reprimanded for talking too loudly - twice). With a budget the envy of any ADC show, what is sounding and looking like a superb cast and an operatic score many consider one of the greatest ever written, a trip to West Road for a performance of Figaro is surely a Lenten must, breast fondling and all.