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The first premiere of the new Staatsoper season is a qualified success, led by Eleanora Buratto's superb Suor Angelica and Ambrogio Maestri's masterly Gianni Schicchi in Puccini's triptych of one-act operas. 

The new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann explores the gothic, magical nature of the story, with a solid cast led by Chaslin’s somewhat heavy baton.

Five highly dissatisfied lead characters find only disastrous or ambiguous outcomes. Yet there are few greater operas than this.

A revival for Sir David McVicar's staging from last season, but this time reverting from French to the four-act Italian version, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. 

Rossini's Otello is rarely performed, mainly due to its three demanding tenor roles, but the Rossini Opera Festival delivers a knockout, both vocally and emotionally. 

A new production by Pier Luigi Pizzi opens the festival in Pesaro with Giacomo Sagripanti in the pit leading a strong cast and powerful chorus.

Omer Meir Wellber conducts a spirited account of Verdi's early opera, semi-staged and live-streamed from the Teatro Massimo.

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden revives a successful, romantic production by Lindy Hume, with Eleonora Buratto and Benjamin Bernheim as the protagonists.

Christine Goerke gives a thrillingly fleshed-out performance as the princess Turandot that is everything one wants opera to be.

Barrie Kosky's troubled production returns to Covent Garden

A disappointing new production by David Marton at Opéra de Lyon. 

Only soprano Eleonora Buratto’s Mimì added real warmth and pathos to Mario Pontiggi's staging. 

Gifted conductor Andrea Battistoni and a vocally seductive cast made this revival of Benedict Andrews’s flawed La bohème a musical triumph.

Jean-François Sivadier's pulsating new production propels The Don through his lusty adventures at a whirlwind pace. 

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Carmen is lusciously embodied, with expressionistic splashes of colour against a quasi-modern backdrop. 

Eleonora Buratto showed a voice with plenty of style and character, but her recital was not always inspired. 

Teatro di San Carlo closed its Opera Festival summer season with Le nozze di Figaro, which director Chiara Muti staged as a timeless classic

The singing is the main attraction in Dutch National Opera’s Le nozze di Figaro, but this new production is also entertaining and looks good enough to eat.

The Chicago Symphony and Riccardo Muti celebrate Shakespeare's Anniversary.

Led by phenomenal performances by tenor Javier Camarena and his superb colleagues, Met's Don Pasquale was a joyous occasion to celebrate Donizetti's late Opera Buffa.

The story still remained moving and the performance was musically pleasant, but the staging did not convince overall

To celebrate its 50th birthday Dutch National Opera put on a festive tribute to the people that have made it the innovative and much-admired house it is today.

A charmingly-retro, Naïf Art production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore at Teatro alla Scala provided a refreshing departure from the minimal, post-apocalyptic devastation trends of modern stagecraft.

Roberto De Simone's staging evokes a fabulous out-of-time China, and perfectly accompanies the majesty of Puccini’s last and unfinished opera. De Simone chooses to stop the opera at the point of Puccini's death, without Franco Alfano's finale.

Director Michieletto’s playful staging, Stefano Montanari’s expressive conducting and stylish singing from a cast of seasoned Rossinian singers make for a thoroughly enjoyable new production of the too rare Il viaggio a Reims at the Dutch National Opera.

Thoughtful character placement and a keen eye for detail contribute to a Carmen in Rome which is short on passion, but lovingly played. 

“Of all my works, the one that pleases me most is the Casa I’ve had built in Milan to accommodate old singers who have not been favoured by fortune or who did not possess the virtue of thrift in their youth”. This is how Verdi described the retirement home for elderly musicians he founded at the time of the composition of this opera Falstaff.