Charlotte Valori read Classics at Christ Church, Oxford. As a classicist, her main interest is Greek tragedy and its reception by later cultures, which has led to a continuing passion for theatre and opera. Charlotte reviews for several online magazines, and won the Bachtrack Opera Award 2015 for Best Written English Review. Follow her on Twitter @operissima.
Jonathan Dove's witty Jane Austen chamber opera received a standing ovation from an ecstatic audience: quite the opening salvo for a brand new summer opera festival.
Bampton’s “mission to rescue unjustly neglected classical period opera” is vindicated once again with a fresh, fun account of the near-lost original source for Rossini's La Cenerentola: Isouard's Cendrillon.
Barrie Kosky's punchy, visually exhilarating take on Saul, with Iestyn Davies as a sublime David, makes for a powerful evening of drama at Glyndebourne.
Ariadne auf Naxos shines in an ultra-contemporary world of high net worth tantrums at Longborough Festival Opera, complete with glam rock fairies, giant string, and glorious music.
Tough, thrilling, ambitious and new: The Skating Rink is an exciting new major commission by Garsington, and its world première delivered on every level.
Another masterful, sprightly and unstuffily fun production of Handel at Iford: Christopher Cowell's Partenope is erotically charged, well cast and comically compelling.
Daisy Evans' take on Verdi's iconic tale of love stymied by the cruelty of others is characteristically innovative and insightful, while also blessed with a remarkable central performance from Anna Patalong.
Bruno Ravella's fast-paced Falstaff for Garsington still has crucial space for pathos amid the comedy, with a notably subtle central performance from Henry Waddington.
Emily Howard's new opera, an Aldeburgh Festival commission, takes an ambitiously modernist approach to a dystopian story of loneliness: a tough, but thought-provoking work.
Jeff Clarke's characteristically high-octane style seems made for the sarcastic, hyperactive existential madness that is Candide in this little gem of a production for Iford.
Julius Drake, Krzysztof Chorzelski and Mark Padmore contributed their notable gifts of piano, viola and voice respectively in a very special, often heartfelt fundraising evening for two music education charities.
A mixed programme of Corelli, Handel and Pergolesi brings beauty and spiritual intensity, as well as some empowered erotic playfulness, to an evening with the Academy of Ancient Music.
I Fagiolini's very interesting programme of music by Monteverdi and his contemporaries pulls together a wide range of works, but somehow lacks an ensemble feel.
Zemlinsky's dark story of infidelity and murder, from Oscar Wilde's unfinished play, poses a significant musical challenge for both audience and director.
Opera in the City puts two key short works side by side, both duos, to create an evening of contrasting voices in which mature, selfish passion quails before youthful promise.
Wet English summer weather may have driven Bampton's pacy revival of Salieri's wickedly funny La scuola de' gelosi indoors, but rain could not dampen the sheer fun ahead.
A fresh, yet traditional Magic Flute at Longborough uses puppetry to bring an atmosphere of fairytale onto the stage, with fine singing from a strong cast.
A period-perfect Albert Herring from Francis Matthews for Buxton International Festival takes time to settle into its stride, but provides plenty of laughs along the way.
A searing, edge-of-your-seat spinetingler from Elijah Moshinsky makes the strongest possible case for Verdi's first Macbeth, ideally suited to the proportions of Buxton's beautiful Opera House.
The fashion for reviving Mozart's teenage operas brings a vocally dazzling production of Lucio Silla to Buxton, nevertheless hampered by the work's own lack of believable drama and some fairly flat staging.
