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Simple solutions prove the best in Beethoven's "problem" opera as John Cox's staging is revived at Garsington.

It's been in the Glyndebourne rep for almost fifty years, but John Cox's production, complete with Hockney's iconic set, remains timeless. Robin Ticciati's superb conducting and an excellent cast made this latest revival a complete success.

A memorable performance makes a worthy memorial to the late, great Bernard Haitink, who conducted the production's premiere. 

Synergies between singers compensated for accurate but unexciting orchestral playing.

Ailyn Pérez draws every eye and ear to her in an easy-on-the-eye production that doesn't solve some of the work's inherent contradictions.

A slick production from the Garsington Opera Company, who use the location of the Wormley Estate to their full advantage. 

Late in the opera, in the calm that settles after a vaudeville of ballet dancers and Italian singers, Fleming’s poise pervades the Countess’s closing rumination over love and the nature of art. It’s a concert piece nestled in Capriccio’s narrative bustle, and to hear Fleming sing it is to be reminded of her talents as a communicator in music within and beyond the opera stage.

Garsington Opera takes a comedic approach to Beethoven's Fidelio. The result is amusing and musically strong, but lacking in both dynamic staging and emotional depth.

‘To lose one singer, Mr Terracini, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two, one of them in the title role, looks like … a disaster’. Such were the thoughts running through my head when the Artistic Director of Opera Australia made the pre-performance announcement.

The gist of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss’ opera-within-an-opera, is this: a demanding patron insists on having his entertainment for a given evening – a burlesque act and an opera – combined into one work, greatly upsetting the archetypal “serious artist” composer of the opera.

Read our review of John Cox's production of Strauss­' Capriccio in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

The Royal Academy of Music has a small but beautifully refurbished theatre, the 230 seat Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, where it stages full opera performances. Although many of the seats are taken by Academy staff, performers' friends and families, talent scouts and others with specific reasons for being there, some of the tickets are available to the public.