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Mélisande als Lulu in David Pountneys unbefriedigender Inszenierung von Debussys Pelléas et Mélisande für die Welsh National Opera.

A solid Figaro in Cardiff, in which individual performances are a joy, and humour abounds. 

David Pountney completes his “Verdi trilogy” for the company but although his staging has fluidity, it lacks an explosive ending... and the vocal performances disappoint. 

Welsh National Opera brought a cast of strong voices to Birmingham for a production of Rigoletto intriguingly set in the White House of the 1960s. 

Virginie Verrez acted not with fire and ice but with gallic insouciance.

It’s a small miracle that the production has been recreated so well in such a short time frame.

It is a thing of wonder that Roberto Devereux is one of Donizetti’s lesser known works. Whether on account of its challenging soprano part, or its fussy Tudor setting, it is rarely performed, but contains some of the composer’s most beautiful – and indeed memorable – arias and duets.

Dominic Cooke’s Magritte-inspired production returns to Wales Millennium Centre to keep the audience giggling. 

Musically, WNO gets it right. Straightforward brilliance is the order of the day, and plenty of it.

Even given a routine revival, McVicar's staging has much to recommend it, returning the opera to its literary roots. 

Delights both sugary and strange in this revival of La Cenerentola by Welsh National Opera.

WNO make a compelling case for Prokofiev's gargantuan War and Peace.

Stellar voices and orcheatra and some inspired staging choices elevate an otherwise heavy-handed production of Pelléas et Mélisande from the WNO at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

A strong cast take us to the brink of damnation in Welsh National Opera’s revival of Don Giovanni.

Carlo Rizzi conducts WNO's Tosca revival in Cardiff.

When the entire plot is triggered by a freak accident, you can't blame director David Pountney for making Fate itself one of the key characters.  

The cavernous Mayflower pit eats singers for breakfast and only Natalya Romaniw’s full-blooded Tatyana escaped its jaws unmarked

David Pountney's House of the Dead makes for high entertainment at Welsh National Opera.

Welsh National Opera’s new season commemorating the centenary of the 1917 Revolution with three Russian-themed works opens with both a bang and a whimper with this trenchant revival.

WNO's excellent revival of John Copley's 2011 staging of Die Fledermaus is a delight. 

Gloriously sung and stylishly played, this Rosenkavalier is a feast for the ears and eyes and should be heard without delay. 

Welsh National Opera brings its 1978 production of Madama Butterfly to Milton Keynes.  

Frank Martin’s Le Vin herbé is as anti-Wagnerian a work as you could imagine. It is also the odd one out in Welsh National Opera’s “Love’s Poisoned Chalice” spring season.

A musically excellent and unpretentious performance of Puccini's masterpiece from Cardiff.

Welsh National Opera's co-production of Kiss me, Kate is another good argument for opera companies to stage Broadway musicals.

Oliver Sears' production of Macbeth comes to Cardiff in a production which offers a great deal musically but doesn't quite coalesce dramatically. 

André Tchaikowsky's version of The Merchant of Venice combines his love of Shakespeare with his recollections of a harsh childhood as a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Welsh National Opera may have reached the ripe old age of seventy but it's very much alive and kicking.

David Jones' First World War epic poem comes to musical life in Iain Bell's newly-commissioned opera. 

Elena Langer and David Pountney's new WNO opera Figaro Gets a Divorce did not disappoint. Langer's new refreshing score had flair and imagination in a memorable performance.

Welsh National Opera's new production of The Barber of Seville disappoints in an uncoordinated performance in Bristol. 

Lothar Koenigs conducted a musically excellent and dramatically straightforward performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in Cardiff.

Sondheim's Sweeney Todd seen and heard as it is: one of the greatest late-20th-century operas. 

With Lawrence Zazzo's spectacular counter-tenor voice, Handel's Orlando finds an ideal interpreter.

Annilese Miskimmon's production of I puritani mixes Royalists with Loyalists - but is musically successful under Carlo Rizzi's baton.

Richard Ayres's Peter Pan, in a new WNO production, leaves J.M. Barrie's story dangling. 

Hansel and Gretel is often treated as a children's opera, suitable for family viewing at Christmas, but as Richard Jones' production demonstrates, it is a good deal darker than that.

Lothar Koenigs conducts a stylish, colourful Magic Flute inspired by Magritte. 

The Welsh National Opera took to the Hippodrome stage for the Bristol leg of their UK tour ofCarmen. This was a revival of Welsh National Opera’s production in the late 1990s, co-produced with Scottish Opera.

A colour-coded Mosè in Egitto uses the paintings of Marc Chagall to inspire the costumes for the Jews and the Egyptians in this production of a Rossinian rarity.

Welsh National Opera's new production of Rossini's William Tell shows off orchestra and chorus to their full under Carlo Rizzi's baton

How does Usher House stand up? Like the house, it doesn’t. Welsh National Opera's double bill based on The Fall of the House of Usher underwhelms.

Rudolf Frey's production of Nabucco for Welsh National Opera undercuts the solemnity and beauty of the opera, detracting from some fine performances. 

A riveting performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, despite the absence of the golden calf, the burning bush, Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Treliński’s de-romanticizing of the plot of Puccini's Manon Lescaut makes for a compelling piece of theatre… it’s just not Manon. 

A great post-war classic by Henze in a strong new production from Welsh National Opera. 

Miraculous as Jonathan Harvey’s music is, it seems reductive to call Wagner Dream an opera. Half the cast, after all, don’t even sing, but act: it’s a sincere meeting of music and theatre in a way that opera usually isn’t.

Welsh National Opera’s contribution to the Wagner bicentenary is in the form of a summer season entitled Wagner Dream, consisting of Jonathan Harvey’s opera of the same name, a run of Madam Butterfly, and Antony McDonald’s new production of Lohengrin. Lothar Koenigs conducted an excellent performance of Wagner’s romantic opera at a packed Wales Millennium Centre.

35 years and many revivals after it was first seen, the late Joachim Herz’s version of Madam Butterfly (“Madama” spelt without the “a” here) is still going. For WNO’s themed series of “Free Spirits”, Caroline Chaney took on the revival director’s mantle. The result was a reliable production lacking in originality but not in warmth.

Is it possible for us to feel a shred of sympathy for Lulu, surely one of opera’s most notorious anti-heroines, even when she meets her grizzly demise at the coda of Berg’s eponymous masterwork? I think it speaks volumes about the astonishing quality of soprano Marie Arnet’s performance that my answer to this question after seeing Welsh National Opera’s new production of Lulu is a most definite “n