We know this because those of us who flocked to the just-finished season of the Queanbeyan Players' delightful production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado heard a disparaging reference to "Andrew Barr's light rail" in W.S. Gilbert's witty libretto. Gilbert, bless him, was born in 1836, making him 179 today.

But I am teasing you, for it is a feature of clever modern productions of G&S that they add some current words about current controversies and personalities to Gilbert's satires of his own times. In this production there was a (very popular with the audience) dig at Bronwyn Bishop's promiscuous use of a helicopter. Then, more popular still (lots of laughter and clapping) the regal Mikado himself sang a scoffing reference to the ACT government's light rail. Any ACT government gnomes in the audience may have experienced a thrill of fear at the audience's rapt reaction. It seemed to say that light rail rage is on voters' minds, even when they having a nice night's entertainment. .

Lovers of our language owe a great deal to Gilbert for his invention of new words, so as to create rhymes where for the moment they seemed impossible. In The Mikado the character Pooh Bah sings to a young man "I'm sorry to be/Of your pleasure a diminutioner" so as to be able go on to sing the sad news that the damsel the young man desires is about to marry and then "toddle away...with the Lord High Executioner".

Diminutioner is an under-utilised word when, really, there are all sorts of employment opportunities for it. Political journalists might like to point out how each new opinion poll is for Bill Shorten and his party a diminutioner of their hopes. The way the same old anti-light-rail fogeys dominate this newspaper's Letters page is a diminutioner of the intellectual vibrancy a Letters page should give.

And while we're at the opera and with Paris on all our minds Canberra Opera announces its forthcoming production of La Boheme, set of course in the bohemian quarters of the Paris of the 1840s.

In our picture we see Canberra Opera's production's Mimi (Louise Keast) and Rodolfo (Charles Hudson), battling bohemians, out on the city's wintry streets where they are lightly dusted with snow.

Even those of us who adore opera will acknowledge that you do sometimes have to leave your critical faculties in the cloak room on the way in to the show, picking them up as you leave. So for example in La Boheme the plot requires Mimi to become frail and sickly, an impossible demand for the sorts of robust and radiantly healthy power-lunged sopranos mostly chosen to warble her role. The Mimi of our picture looks a picture of health even though, hatless in the snow, her tiny ears are surely frozen.

Canberra Opera advises us that in this production the famous duets and arias (including and especially Rodolfo's Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen) will be sung in Puccini's prescribed Italian but that everything else will be in English so that we can follow the tragic bohemian goings-on.

Canberra Opera (its production of The Magic Flute was so good that this battling, bohemian columnist somehow scraped together enough pennies, by begging and busking, to go to it twice) explains that "To become a professional opera singer, it is expected that one will have learnt, studied and performed roles prior to being contracted to a professional opera house. There are limited opportunities available for young singers to get this crucial experience. This is why Canberra Opera was formed and exists today.

"We are a fairly new small company with limited funding sources, so we greatly appreciate the support you may have provided through past attendance and hope that you continue to enjoy our performances into the future."

Yes, it will be unCanberran not to go, supportively, to Canberra Opera's La Boheme. Sensitive Canberrans who plan to go to this La Boheme and who are not familiar with how it unfolds are warned to come tissue-equipped.

Canberra Opera's tissue-requiring production of Puccini's La Boheme is at the Ainslie Arts Centre from 27 November to 6 December. Tickets can be purchased through Canberra Opera's website. http://www.canberraopera.org.au/tickets

And from human songbirds we segue effortlessly to true songbirds, to the Australian Magpie-lark (or Mudlark or Pee Wee).

Wednesday's column was graced with some very professional bird photographs (for us a little formal and lacking in knockabout birdiness) from Leila Jeffreys' new book Birdland. Here, to restore some knockabout balance and to pursue the theme of the sheer bushiness of the Bush Capital is Tony May's refreshingly amateur picture of goings on at his place.

"Admittedly a poor photograph, but you may find this amusing. A young Pee Wee who prematurely flew the coop and found itself in my bird-friendly courtyard in Pearce soon found solace in the company of an imitation duck."

What has become of the waif?

Tony May advises: "It's still in the courtyard and being fed by its parents, not by the duck. It can fly a bit so I think it will be a happy ending. I ventured too near the little one yesterday and got a peck on the back of the head from one of its kamikaze parents."