Performer: Fiona Murphy

When you think chic, black-tie country house opera, you probably don’t also think sixteen barefoot nuns being executed. Grange Park Opera’s fusion of these two contrasting ideas, however, has a lot going for it: their production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites combines its minimal but effective staging with some impressive singing.

Henry James’ chilling 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw is a curious story and might be considered a gift to any composer as the basis of an extraordinarily sinister opera libretto.