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Is Roberto Devereux the finest of Donizetti's four Tudor operas? Stephen Langridge's stylish, stylised production and a wonderful cast under Riccardo Frizza make a great case for it. 

Pretty Yende and John Osborn bring star quality to this revival of John Dew’s Vienna staging of Bellini's Civil War opera.

A new, musically convincing production of Bellini's last opera marks a welcome return to the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, but Andrea De Rosa's staging lacks inspiration.

Living in an environment influenced by French culture, Verdi saw the chance of breathing new life into the Italian opera through the grand-opéra. Les Vêpres siciliennes is his successful attempt.

John Osborn leads a very successful premiere of Peter Konwitschny's new production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in Dresden

One of Teatro San Carlo’s most cherished productions of recent years, with an excellent cast of singers and a director who steered at his ease into the libretto’s erratic changes of mood and atmosphere.

Osborn absolutely lives the part; he negotiated formidable heights, intricate passage work and the sheer volume of notes with style and clarity as well as colour and nuance. 

With unbridled imagination, Michieletto fills this usually-problematic space with a wealth of racy detail.

Selectively unearthed from current critical editions, this fabulously performed new Hoffmann plumbs the murky depths of its antihero’s psyche.

Plasson shows all his experience; Lavaudant surprises and delights with his direction; a strong cast sing their hearts out. Who can ask for more?

The Mediterranean setting of Auber's work is recreated by director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti with its intriguing teatro-immagine, where video projections and virtual reality are predominant.

Suggesting that Otello was a migrant, like modern refugees, was not a great staging idea for a production which could count on an high-rate vocal cast.

In one of Bartoli's rare appearances on stage in the UK, she gave an utterly compelling performance as opera's ultimate woman scorned.

Despite starry bel canto experts such as Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and maestro Michele Mariotti, a 2013 Paul Curran staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago reads vacuous on The Metropolitan Opera stage.

A recent production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma starred Cecilia Bartoli, the great mezzo who lives close by, and whom the Zürcher like to claim as one of their own.

A striking staging of Rossini's Guillaume Tell at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva: well cast, beautifully sung and impeccably choreographed.

Sadly, Damiano Michieletto and Antonio Pappano's production is more likely to be remembered for its failings – the awful rape scene, its dullness, plus a list of annoying details too long to mention – than for its musical excellence. It’s worth seeing to get a feel of both.

The task sounded Herculean: turning Benvenuto Cellini, that reputedly difficult, flawed work by Berlioz, into an utterly entertaining show that renders justice to its youthfully energetic music. This is what Terry Gilliam manages to pull off... and it is nothing short of miraculous.

A menacing rather than a bucolic setting for The Met's new production of La donna del lago, but the proof is in the singing... 

At the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, Gianandrea Noseda leads the Teatro Regio Torino in a concert performance of Rossini's William Tell that offers enormous variety without quite hitting the bull's eye.

Verdi’s Otello opens with a fierce storm raging over Cyprus. In Rossini’s version, composed 71 years earlier in 1816, the composer eschewed the Cypriot setting entirely and the storm doesn’t take place until Act III, although last night a mighty crack of thunder resounded over the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées as the audience filed into the opera house. 

The Netherlands Opera’s production of William Tell, directed by Pierre Audi, has proved a daunting endeavor, captivating the audience through its colorful treatment of Rossini’s final opera. From the cast of characters on stage and the musicians of the orchestra to the sound, lighting, stage and costume departments, the roughly four-and-a-half-hour event couldn’t have been more stimulating.

On Saturday night, Antonio Pappano and his Roman orchestra and chorus, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, brought us the first opera of the 2011 Proms- Gioachino Rossini's William Tell.

Rossini's The Barber of Seville has been his most enduringly well-loved opera. It's in the top ten of operas performed worldwide today, and it has stayed at the top of the most-played lists even when many of his other works were little played.

Read our review of Mary Zimmerman's production of Rossini­'s Armida in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.