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Anna Netrebko chews the scenery as Floria Tosca… and there’s a lot of it to get her teeth into in David Livermore’s busy staging in Milan.

Michele Mariotti triumphs in Rossini’s masterpiece with a good cast led by Salome Jicia and a new production, only partially successful.

Anja Harteros brille dans le rôle de Leonora et Brian Jagde convainc en Alvaro, dans une production où la mise en scène et la direction musicale montrent leurs limites.

Robert Wilson's Madama Butterfly is back in Amsterdam starring rising star Elena Stikhina as the doomed Cio-Cio-San.

After a number of eccentric stagings, Mario Pontiggia's traditional production is a hit in Naples. 

Roberto Abbado leads a strong cast in an inspired production by La Fura del Baus.

Damiano Michieletto’s intriguing production of Rigoletto is set in a mental hospital, and sidelines emotion in favour of analysis. The singing, on the other hand, is heartfelt and exciting.

Director Michal Znaniecki sets the action of Verdi's popular Il trovatore in an indeterminate 20th century wartime, undecidedly trying to mix up visual suggestions and primeval anguish

Cirque du Soleil producer Franco Dragone's new Aida for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples aimed to scrub off all the bombast from this triumphalistic work. The eccentricities of the production led to a poor-quality outcome, though there was some fine singing.

Under the artistic and musical direction of Olivier Py and Philippe Jordan, Verdi’s opera has ignited a veritable storm of both fervent criticism and ardent defence.

Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, is a tightly-wound setting of Shakespeare’s familiar tragedy. From the opening storm to the title character dying upon a kiss, it is more fragmentary and emotionally cool than his earlier work, an opera that tends to be more admired than loved.