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Simon Mayo’s Young Adult novels are turned into an operatic romp which explores the fascination of the elements with excellent music and setting, albeit riddled with plot lacunae.

Amid the rough winds of late May, Julia Burbach directs Opera Holland Park's first venture into Wagner – The Flying Dutchman. 

Some good singing performances can't overcome a dated feeling of Gilbert's humour: the evening improves as the storm clouds gather.

Joining OHP's 2019 production of Wolf-Ferrari's charming domestic comedy, a blazing new production of Pagliacci delivers everything that one could want from Leoncavallo's infamous opera. 

Is Puccini's second opera unloved and unlovable? Opera Holland Park makes a commendable attempt to revive Edgar, but struggles to overcome its many flaws.

Deftly conducted by Charlotte Corderoy, Cecilia Stinton's new production of Rossini's immortal comedy brims with fun.

A 16-year interval sounds more like a resurrection than a first revival, but the return of Stephen Barlow's staging of Tosca is well worth the wait.

It’s a risky business to describe comic nuance or timing, so please take my word that these qualities were as pitch-perfect as the vocal prowess on display.

Composer-librettist Adamo does full justice to Louisa May Alcott's 19th-century bestseller, one of the most widely read works in American literature.

Puccini's Giselle-inspired opera is given a superb staging by Martin Lloyd-Evans to deliver Opera Holland Park's banger of the season. 

Quality singing in Cecilia Stinton's new staging comes from touchingly ardent soprano Alison Langer, as Micaëla.

Julia Burbach's new production lacks poetry in spite of an admirable cast led by Samuel Dale Johnson in the title role. 

A good, honest staging and solid singing add up to an excellent new production – its third – at Opera Holland Park. 

Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna provides an airy bon-bouche to Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, brilliantly sung by Natalya Romaniw and David Butt Philip and conducted to fairy-tale perfection by Sian Edwards

Gaitanou’s direction of the singers is so exact that it becomes impossible to separate them from their characters.

Opera Holland Park updates Puccini's setting to the 1960s in a production that does not completely work, but benefits from the strong performance of Elizabeth Llewellyn as its leading lady.

A spirited and seamless production of Strauss’s Ariadne is aided by some excellent singing and playing at London’s premier summer opera festival.

An embarrassingly trite libretto proves unsalvageable, even with a committed cast of singers.

As the two sisters, Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately ideally complemented and blended with each other.  

Opera Holland Park starts its 2018 season with a bang (and a cough), offering a splendid new production of La traviata. Lauren Fagan is a sensational Violetta, but the production is a real company effort and achievement.

Tchaikovsky's High Gothic opera about gambling obsessions is worth seeing for a first class staging, albeit with a mixed musical performance.

After a sparkling Act I, energy fades slightly on a sweltering night in London, but Opera Holland Park's Die Fledermaus has a lot going for it.

Opera Holland Park's traditionally staged Cenerentola has plenty of sparkle and a fine cast of talented singers.

La bohème staged as Tudorbethan drama? Opera Holland Park's quirky tribute to Shakespeare400 is a lot of fun. 

Perhaps not a masterpiece, but worth exploring, Mascagni's Iris returns to Opera Holland Park. 

In Opera Holland Park's latest foray into obscure verismo, an excellent orchestral performance and high quality singing fails to translate into a compelling drama.

Ailyn Bozok's minimlaist production of Delibes' Lakmé at Opera Holland Park contains much tender beauty and is carried by fine musical performances. 

Third time unlucky? After a scorching start to the summer, with superb productions of Il trittico and Flight, Opera Holland Park’s season came unstuck with a horror of a show in Daniel Slater’s Aida.

Flight represents a brave new departure for Opera Holland Park, the first contemporary opera to take to its main stage, in a striking staging with top quality musical performances. 

Opera Holland Park give us a broad span of human joys and tragedies in an excellently staged and acted rendering of Puccini's Il trittico.

Martin Lloyd-Evan's highly sensitive production features a show-stealing performance by Richard Burkhard but is marred by problems of orchestral balance.

An excellent orchestral performance and fine singing from Yvonne Howard and Heather Shipp make Opera Holland Park's Norma well worth seeing, in spite of imperfections.

Alice's story in a sparkling outdoor production for families, which will not disappoint mainstream opera enthusiasts.

Britten's score achieves his usual kaleidoscope of different colours, played marvellously by the City of London Sinfonia under Steuart Bedford. Annilese Miskimmon's production yields an intense dose of psycho-dramatic tension.

Unlike its première, disaster is averted in Opera Holland Park's Il barbiere di Siviglia, where a solidly traditional production is lit up by some splendid vocal performances. 

Stephen Barlow’s staging of Puccini's Western is easy on the eye, if short on verismo. Susannah Glanville impresses as the barkeeper with a heart of gold.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is a bit of a strange fish: a recluse, a self-described mystic, and proud enough of his hybrid German-Italian identity that he appended his mother’s maiden name to his own at the age of nineteen.

There was an element of scenic continuity between the lush greenery and positively balmy Holland Park evening surrounding us, and the staging of Opera Holland Park’s production of L’elisir d’amore: in the background, a large greenhouse full of the brightest sunflowers; in the foreground, sunflowers dotted about the stage, and the back ends of two lorries plastered with a large image of a field of

Bizet’s name, ever since the early (though by no means instant) success of his last opera and major bestseller Carmen, has become synonymous with the idea of catchy tunes and exotic soundworlds. That’s the composer who is with us most of the time.

Whatever Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has going for it, it isn’t suspense – everything that’s going to happen is spelled out the first few pages of the score, as Pinkerton chuckles that the marriage contracts in Japan are as flexible as the property leases, renegotiable on a monthly basis, and toasts the day he gets married “for real” to an American bride.

As I left Holland Park after last night’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, I found myself wondering what they’d put in the orchestra’s cups of tea at the interval. Or, perhaps, what was it that conductor Stuart Stratford said to them.

With Verdi's centenary coming up, his last opera Falstaff has had more attention than usual, with this production at Opera Holland Park following hot on the heels of Robert Carsen's new production at Covent Garden.

After their Mascagni debut last year, with L’amico Fritz (the composer’s first post-Cavalleria opera), Opera Holland Park have set out to uncover more music from the so-called ‘one-hit-wonder’ – still known to most for his smash verismo opera alone.

Howling, gusting wind. Damp, bitter cold. Dark, gathering twilight. Exactly the right atmosphere, you must agree, for Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, based on Sir Walter Scott's romantic historical novel of dark deeds in the grim castles of the Scottish clans, which opened Opera Holland Park's new season.

Alfredo Catalani's La Wally is the last of three rarely performed Italian operas from the late 19th century verismo period to feature in Opera Holland Park's 2011 season. Catalani belongs to group of composers whose place in the modern repertoire suffers from the problem of "not being Puccini," the more poignantly since he was born in Puccini's home town of Lucca.

In his wonderful BBC series on Italian opera, Antonio Pappano declared that "Puccini does love like no other composer," a phrase I've also heard from others.

Pietro Mascagni was catapulted to enduring fame in 1889 when his Cavalleria Rusticana won a competition. But the problem with all Italian opera composers at the end of the 19th century was simple: if you weren't Puccini, it was more or less impossible to avoid his shadow.

Gaetano Donizetti's commedia dell'arte-inspired Don Pasquale is one of the favourites in the opera buffa repertoire. At its ending, the assembled company boisterously enjoin us to remember that when an elderly man marries a much younger woman, no good can result.Apparently, the same is not true of an elderly conductor joining a much younger orchestra.

La Forza del Destino isn't performed nearly as often as Verdi's most popular works: this year's production at Opera Holland Park is the first time it's been staged in the UK for several years.