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English National Opera opens its new season with a revival of David Alden's masterly production. 

Charles Edwards' ambitious production is well served by a strong cast as Grange Park Opera opens its season in the Theatre in the Woods. 

In a face-off between Gabriele Viviani's Scarpia and Malin Byström’s Tosca in this solid revival of Jonathan Kent's 2006 production, there could only be one winner

Gwyn Hughes Jones, Elizabeth Llewellyn and Sir Simon Keenlyside star in David Alden's setting of Otello in a militarised Cyprus.

Musically, WNO gets it right. Straightforward brilliance is the order of the day, and plenty of it.

Michael Barker-Caven sets Aida in a 21st-century war zone in the Middle-East, allowing the audience to focus on the human drama.

When the entire plot is triggered by a freak accident, you can't blame director David Pountney for making Fate itself one of the key characters.  

McDermott envisages Aida as a sister production to his team's mesmeric Akhnaten. But would the hypnotic juggling and glacial choreography work for Giuseppe Verdi's Nile epic?

English National Opera join with the BBC Singers to make Royal Festival Hall debut.

Holten's masonic lodge setting of Meistersinger gets a lot right but is occasionally uneven; Terfel and Hughes Jones are constantly good to listen to.

This revival of Catherine Malfitano’s excellent 2010 production features some splendid singing from Gwyn Hughes Jones as Cavaradossi – but is let down by some poor diction and varying drama.

Richard Jones's production of Puccini’s Western opera La fanciulla del West is well sung, but fails to tap in to the Wild West atmosphere of the surroundings.

Welsh National Opera may have reached the ripe old age of seventy but it's very much alive and kicking.

Tosca’s popularity stems not only from its music, but also from the inherent truth in its drama and its in-depth portrayal of unrestrained human passions. 

Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera is – for him – a tame affair. 

Rarely performed, Verdi's fifth opera Ernani is full of fiery passions, with a relentless flow of melodic invention, as heard in this concert performance by Chelsea Opera Group. 

Scottish Opera's Il trovatore has a uniformly strong cast and shorus who sing finely, conducted by Tobias Ringwood producing spectacular sounds from the orchestra.  A wonderful end to the season. 

With ENO having been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week,  it needed Richard Jones' The Mastersingers of Nuremberg to be a great production. Lit up by a towering performance by Iain Paterson, it is.

The Welsh National Opera took to the Hippodrome stage for the Bristol leg of their UK tour ofCarmen. This was a revival of Welsh National Opera’s production in the late 1990s, co-produced with Scottish Opera.

Treliński’s de-romanticizing of the plot of Puccini's Manon Lescaut makes for a compelling piece of theatre… it’s just not Manon. 

To describe this revival of Puccini's much-loved Madam Butterfly as a visual spectacle would be to do it a disservice. Originally directed by Anthony Minghella in its first outing in 2005, it is one of ENO's greatest success stories.

What to do with a “classic revival” that has, in the main, met the critics’ eye of approval? That was the question facing Natascha Metherell, the revival director of ENO’s production of La bohème, which opened this week at the Coliseum. The revival was in fact deftly handled: a production which remained faithful to Miller’s original vision, with honest, rather than over-egged, sentimentality.

35 years and many revivals after it was first seen, the late Joachim Herz’s version of Madam Butterfly (“Madama” spelt without the “a” here) is still going. For WNO’s themed series of “Free Spirits”, Caroline Chaney took on the revival director’s mantle. The result was a reliable production lacking in originality but not in warmth.

Anthony Minghella's famous production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly debuted with ENO in 2005, and has been revived several times since at the Coliseum, as well as travelling to the Met in New York and the Lithuanian National Opera. ENO's latest revival confirms the classic status of this version, with a musical account which goes some way to matching the sumptuous and – yes – cinematic visuals.

For many people, to repeat a commonplace, opera is about those "wow" moments, the times when music, voice and staging come together to lift you onto a different plane. In ENO's Tosca last night, a "wow" moment happened more or less whenever Gwyn Hughes Jones opened his mouth: his Cavaradossi had total heroism, total artistry and effortless, silk-smooth phrasing.

Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica's libretto for La Bohème has to rank as one of the greatest libretti in opera. It's fast-paced, taut and witty throughout, expansively romantic at times. Most importantly, the wonder of La Bohème is the way it paints human relationships with the pin-point accuracy of a Dutch master or a Victorian miniaturist.