Performer: Liam Bonner

Zeffirelli excess and Woody Allen wit: Los Angeles Opera's season opens with a double bill of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Where is the line? Where does the stage end and the audience begin? This is what Australian director Barrie Kosky probes in his production pairing Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle.

“It is not his trial, it is mine, mine. It is I whom the devil awaits.” Richard Croft's Vere leads an outstanding cast in LA Opera's revival of Billy Budd.

A work crucial to the development and appreciation of opera as a relevant modern art form premièred on the East Coast to well-deserved acclaim at a legendary Philadelphia venue. From the first note out of the pit orchestra to the final strains of the last act, Silent Night, presented by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music, was a tour de force – from conception to execution.

After the success of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia, Britten and director/librettist Eric Crozier discussed future operatic projects. The composer wanted his next opera to be a comedy and insisted that it be set in England. When Crozier suggested adapting Guy de Maupassant’s La Rosier de Madame Husson, Britten knew he was on to something good. Indeed, it was an ideal choice.

Read our review of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leise's production of Ambroise Thomas­'s Hamlet in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.