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Cecilia Ligorio directs the first new production of Mozart's early opera at the Opera di Roma since 1988. 

François de Carpentries' Oslo production of The Barber of Seville was both unfunny and underwhelming. 

A musically excellent and unpretentious performance of Puccini's masterpiece from Cardiff.

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.

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

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.

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.