Performer: Laura Mitchell

A Haydn choral sandwich and meaty Mozart filling served up by the RPO, the pianist Llŷr Williams, City of London Choir and Hilary Davan Wetton.

Updating 470BC Abydos to a 1940s RAF base complete with tin hangar and outdoor privy seemed at times more Dad’s Army than a particularly cohesive tale of war and love.

Mozart’s Così fan tutte is a comic opera filled with deceit, disguises and betrayal, all carried along by a breathtaking score and witty lyrics. What better way to start ETO’s Spring 2013 season than with a new rendering of this timeless work, in a brilliantly clever English translation by Martin Fitzpatrick.

Following acclaimed productions at Scottish Opera of The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, recently revived, Thomas Allen returns to Glasgow to direct The Magic Flute.

In Janáček's opera The Makropulos Case, the operagoer must accept a single premise of implausible fantasy: from then on, the action flows inexorably and logically to its conclusion. It's a device used by a great deal of fantasy literature, from the low-brow of The Day of the Triffids to the high-brow of Janáček's compatriot Kafka's Metamorphosis.