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L'elisir d'amore may not immediately bring Skegness or Romney to mind, but ETO's new production works quite well there... just look out for the seagulls!

Eloise Lally shifts the Romeo and Juliet love story into New York mafia families. Jessica Cale and Samantha Price provide blissful bel canto as the star-crossed lovers.

ETO kicks off its spring season with What Dreams May Come, a strange and moving staging of songs inspired by William Shakespeare.

Judith Weir's cryptic folk opera lacks the narrative propulsion necessary to enthral an audience, and without resolution there is no catharsis.

Olivia Fuchs' production of Rimsky-Korsakov's charming fable for ETO begins its tour in Hackney and is worth travelling to see. Catch this thoughtful production in a town near you.

Jude Christian's indulgent reinvention of Puccini's opera does not serve English Touring Opera well as it embarks on its spring tour. 

Harmonious images and geometric designs frame an effective staging and well sung performance of Monteverdi's last opera.

Top notch singing, judicious pruning and production which prioritises human drama over camp spectacle make for an illuminating take on Handel's most frequently staged opera.

A Rossini comedy should sparkle, but this new production, starting its tour from Hackney, is decidedly lacking bubbles.

Donizetti’s tale of one the Italian Renaissance’s objects of hate is well sung and superbly acted in ETO's new spring tour production.

A fine cast breathes life into the story of the captured Ottoman Sultan Bajazet and his Mongol conqueror.

A revival of James Conway's staging of Ottone launches English Touring Opera's autumn season of three Handel operas. 

Rimsky-Korsakov's anti-tsarist satirical fairytale makes for an entertaining rarity in ETO's spring tour.

English Touring Opera has revived James Conway's production of La bohème to launch the company back to full operations post-lockdown. What this new run lacks in finesse is made up for in bags of heart and spirit.

It sizzles with energy, fizzes with musical delight and rejoices in an understated sense of fun. Conway gives the work’s incongruities free rein and defies the audience not to chuckle.

James Conway's production for English Touring Opera returns in a trimmed-down, single-evening guise. 

It is clear that these women are already ripe for plucking even before Don Alfonso unleashes his dastardly plan.

Weill's satirical fairytale bites just as hard today as it did in 1933.

English Touring Opera open their autumn season with the first of two Singspiels. 

A fine cast, orchestra and production make English Touring Opera's new production of Verdi's Macbeth a must see. 

A direct and expressive new production of one of Mozart's most adventurous operas enthrals at the Hackney Empire. 

Rossini's Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra is a hard work to love and English Touring Opera's new production which launched at the Hackney Empire Theatre struggled to make a case for regular outings.

English Touring Opera's triple bill of early Baroque miniatures promised an intruiging evening but failed up to expectations. 

Immersive, direct and passionate Bach from English Touring Opera and the Old Street Band.

English Touring Opera’s new Radamisto took time to settle down on opening night.

ETO's production of Mozart's nuptial comedy, being performed in towns across the country, lacks depth but has some terrific singing with a particularly fine Susanna from Rachel Redmond.

A great return appearance for English Touring Opera's Puccini double bill opening its spring tour at the Hackney Empire.

ETO's extracts from Rossini's serious operas at the Hackney Empire lacked spark and dynamism, but saw a fine showing from Elena Xanthoudakis and Catherine Carby.

Conway's decision to render Handel's epic in its entirety was let down by a static staging and unnecessary repeats that masked the hidden gem-like arias.

A searing examination of love in a time war is to be found in a new production and new edition of Rameau's greatest work.

A joyous explosion of tuneful Victorian satire provides an unlikely, yet ideal, contrast to English Touring Opera's Tosca as their Patience tours the UK in this finely-cast, period-perfect production.

Blanche McIntyre's new production for ETO proves a disappointment, saddled with a trip hazard of a set. 

ETO's charactistically clear, simple production conveys Homer's story with clarity, confidence, and charm – and even humour – from a fine cast, making an exciting start to fully-staged opera at Saffron Hall. 

Clever staging and a high standard of acting does much to happily while away the three hours of this baroque opera in the second of ETO's Baroque extravaganza.

Updating 470BC Abydos to a 1940s RAF base complete with tin hangar and outdoor privy seemed at times more Dad’s Army than a particularly cohesive tale of war and love.

English Touring Opera gives Gluck's reformist masterpiece a suitably blood-spattered outing in a production which keeps the opera in touch with its classical roots. 

Wonderful singing and playing liven up a slightly lifeless staging of Mozart's turbulent masterpiece. 

Donizetti's back catalogue proves just as rich as his well-loved works, with this blisteringly good foray into an extraordinary opera whose UK premiere is 179 undeserved years late. 

A superbly-sung title role from Ed Ballard is the best part of this otherwise patchy, well-sung but ultimately unmoving Werther from English Touring Opera. 

Fine orchestral and singing performances in ETO's Pelléas et Mélisande aren't enough to overcome some of the work's difficulties.

James Conway’s production of La bohème may be a little restrained on banter, but hits all the emotional high notes, is compellingly played and superbly sung. 

Donizetti’s Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo hasn’t strayed onto UK shores for decades, but is given a spirited performance by English Touring Opera. 

Written half a century before the verismo movement, Donizetti paints a true-to-life portrait of a besieged people which is genuinely touching. James Conway's straightforward production features some notable individual singers and an excellent performance by the chorus.

A beautiful and much-put-upon princess, a pair of royal lovers who have never met, a scheming mother, and a pirate who is a prince in disguise: Ottone is a feast of ideas, beauty and fun. 

Few composers deal in genial wit better than Joseph Haydn, so it was baffling that his opera buffa Il mondo della luna left me so grumpy in this English Touring Opera production. 

English Touring Opera's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute launches in Hackney, balanced more towards fun than profundity, with some stunning coups de théâtre.

Paul Bunyan is something of an oddity in Benjamin Britten’s oeuvre; a satirical operetta (with a libretto by W.H. Auden) about pioneers in America who are led by a gigantic lumberjack. 

English Touring Opera take Tippett’s powerful pacifist retelling of Homer’s Iliad on tour in a strong, beautifully designed production, directed by James Conway, which will leave hearts and minds in turmoil.

Agrippina was a force to be reckoned with: the granddaughter, sister, niece, wife and mother of four Roman Emperors (and lover, incestuously, of at least two). As Mary Beard points out in her brilliant programme introduction, “Agrippina was probably the best connected woman that the Roman world ever saw” – and one of the most ruthless.