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A great return appearance for English Touring Opera's Puccini double bill opening its spring tour at the Hackney Empire.

Blanche McIntyre's new production for ETO proves a disappointment, saddled with a trip hazard of a set. 

English Touring Opera gives Gluck's reformist masterpiece a suitably blood-spattered outing in a production which keeps the opera in touch with its classical roots. 

Donizetti's back catalogue proves just as rich as his well-loved works, with this blisteringly good foray into an extraordinary opera whose UK premiere is 179 undeserved years late. 

Donizetti’s Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo hasn’t strayed onto UK shores for decades, but is given a spirited performance by English Touring Opera. 

Written half a century before the verismo movement, Donizetti paints a true-to-life portrait of a besieged people which is genuinely touching. James Conway's straightforward production features some notable individual singers and an excellent performance by the chorus.

Opera Project’s production of Verdi’s famous and arguably most-loved opera La Traviata was not lacking in impact, considering it was a small-scale production. This being the second time I have seen an Opera Project production, I am certainly not dissuaded from seeing what they come up with next. La Traviata is a chamber opera, in a way, well suited to the smaller venue of St George’s Bristol.

English Touring Opera’s Verdi title for their Spring season in this composer’s (and Wagner’s) anniversary year is one of no small ambition. Premièred to only modest success in Venice in 1857, it would take Verdi another 20 or so years to return to Simon Boccanegra to try to fix the old “wobbly table” (as he and his librettist, Boito, later dubbed the 1857 version).