For many years there have been two incontrovertible axioms at Lincoln Center Plaza. The first is that the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera is far superior to the New York Philharmonic; the second is that the New York City Opera is far more adventurous than the Metropolitan. This new season is no exception and promises much excitement at the New York State Theater.

The big news for the fall is the debut of conductor Leon Botstein, who has built a reputation as the Indiana Jones of the opera world, unearthing rare scores of high quality as the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. At City Opera on October 8, he will unveil Paul Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, an impressionistic retelling of the Bluebeard legend from the woman’s point of view. Unlike Debussy, who faced open opposition from Maurice Maeterlinck when he produced his “Pelleas et Melisande,” Dukas, an influential music critic, actually enlisted the great poet and playwright to compose the libretto for this mysterious work. Austrian mezzo-soprano Renate Behle appears as Ariane, alongside Ursula Ferri, who last season dazzled in a supporting role in Strauss’s “Daphne.”

Opening October 23 is The Mines of Sulphur by Richard Rodney Bennett, the English doppelganger of American composer Robert Russell Bennett. The British Bennett is probably best known for his film scores, including “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and the bizarrely chromatic “Equus,” but he also wrote a number of diatonic operas in the 1960s. “Sulphur” is a good, old-fashioned murder mystery, complete with a revealing play within a play.

For children, a new production of The Little Prince by another film composer, Rachel Portman, opens November 12. The stars of this two-character affair may well be the sets and costumes of Maria Bjornson, who created the same for Broadway’s “Phantom of the Opera.”

City Opera has recruited another “Phantom” alumnus, Michael Ball (who played Raoul in the London production), for a new production of the Gilbert and Sullivan howler Patience, which opens September 10. Not only is Oscar Wilde parodied unmercifully in this send-up of the closeted world of the aesthete, but Italian opera also comes in for a sound thrashing.

No house survives on rarities alone, of course, and this fall City Opera will present five revivals. Verdi is strangely absent, but there are two Rossinis of the rollicking variety. The first, Il Viaggio a Reims (September 22), is probably familiar only to those who know “Le Comte Ory,” since the composer “borrowed” entire sections of the former to flesh out the latter. The action, or, in this case, stasis of the plot is part opera comique and part Luis Bunuel. And the perennial favorite Barber of Seville (October 15) is also present, and should receive a good run from the high-energy, youthful cast that consistently graces the City Opera stage.

Finally, three Puccini evenings are filled with promise. The best performance at City Opera last season was the Cio-Cio-San of Lori Phillips, who this fall will return as Turandot (October 29). Carla Thelen Hanson will make her debut as Floria Tosca (October 9), and two artists, Jee Hyun Lim and Shu-Ying Li, will step into the breech as Madama Butterfly (September 11). All three pieces feature extremely subtle colors for the orchestra, and the fine ensemble at City Opera will have its chance to shine.