Performer: Jonathan Summers

Vittorio Grigolo and Joyce DiDonato live up to their starry reputations in the Royal Opera's latest revival of Massenet's tale of unrequited love and suicide.

“Beware, my Lord, of jealousy” warns Iago, planting the seed of doubt in Otello’s mind. Beware, too, the dangers of preconceptions. Keen anticipation of this new production of Verdi’s Otello was tempered by the prospect of David Alden as director.

In a world that sees racial hatred and resulting violence across the world, Aldeburgh's stylish production re-establishes the meaning of Owen Wingrave for a new generation, performed by the new generation.

Destiny, Fate, Providence: different ways of describing the sense of an external agency shaping our ends. Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, based on a Spanish play by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, is a sprawling tale in which the characters’ lives are irrevocably shaped by a fatal accident.

Willy Decker’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, which originated at La Monnaie in Brussels in 1994 and was revived at London’s Royal Opera House in 2004 and 2011, has now reached Tokyo. The work opened the new season of the New National Theatre Tokyo, the capital’s main opera house, currently celebrating its 15th anniversary.

For a taut drama about the relationships between men thrown together in an enclosed space, it's hard to imagine a better setting than the claustrophobic environment of a warship in Nelson's navy.