Performer: Catrine Kirkman

John Savournin takes Mozart's Magic Flute on an exotic adventure into the Peruvian rainforest: and retrieves more than a sprinkling of Inca gold. 

Midsummer Opera took to the stage of St John’s Waterloo for a vivacious performance of Verdi’s tragic Un ballo in maschera, celebrating their 30th anniversary season.

“... and as Venice in many things surpasses all places else where I have been, so are these Operas the most excellent of all its glorious Vanities.” So wrote the entranced English traveller Richard Bargrave in 1655. These days, however, Venice travels to England in the form of the English Touring Opera’s 2013 autumn season production.

When the Baroque movement in art ended, the backlash was severe. The very adjective became an insult: the cold, clear, rarefied eye of 18th-century Neoclassicism found its opulence stifling, its luxury oppressive, and its profusion of ornament, ugly.

One hundred and sixteen years ago, on 7 March 1896, Gilbert and Sullivan presented before the London public their final Savoy Opera: The Grand Duke.