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Gaitanou’s direction of the singers is so exact that it becomes impossible to separate them from their characters.

An embarrassingly trite libretto proves unsalvageable, even with a committed cast of singers.

The sheer opulence of Minghella's staging often overwhelms, drenched in colour. Is that enough to really get to the core of the drama though, or is it all surface gloss?

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

Flight represents a brave new departure for Opera Holland Park, the first contemporary opera to take to its main stage, in a striking staging with top quality musical performances. 

ENO's revival of Jonathan Miller's 2009 production is musically solid, but falls short of the dramatic intensity achieved in previous years.

It is a myth that pearls can be formed from grit and so it proved here, where a vastly underwhelming musical performance sullied a much improved production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. 

To describe this revival of Puccini's much-loved Madam Butterfly as a visual spectacle would be to do it a disservice. Originally directed by Anthony Minghella in its first outing in 2005, it is one of ENO's greatest success stories.

There was an element of scenic continuity between the lush greenery and positively balmy Holland Park evening surrounding us, and the staging of Opera Holland Park’s production of L’elisir d’amore: in the background, a large greenhouse full of the brightest sunflowers; in the foreground, sunflowers dotted about the stage, and the back ends of two lorries plastered with a large image of a field of

Professional performances of English operas are rare – they always have been – and it is presumably the 60th anniversary of The Pilgrim’s Progress specifically that has prompted this 2012 revival. It seems that without a significant anniversary to justify blowing the dust off a score, English operas tend to lie unheeded – the exception of course is Benjamin Britten.

With Verdi's centenary coming up, his last opera Falstaff has had more attention than usual, with this production at Opera Holland Park following hot on the heels of Robert Carsen's new production at Covent Garden.