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A brilliant modern revisioning by Genevieve Raghu, in a superb contemporary translation by Benjamin Hamilton, makes Don Giovanni feel more relevant than ever for the Tinder generation and their disposable approach to love. 

Hampstead Garden Opera’s new staging of Xerxes is slick and contemporary with a well thought-out re-interpretation of the plot, offering a fresh perspective to the opera.

Excellent ensemble work makes for a compelling rendering of Britten's satirical chamber opera Albert Herring, with some impressive young tenor and baritone voices. 

La Calisto is a delicious mash-up of two classical legends: Jupiter’s seduction of Diana’s acolyte Calisto and Diana’s own romance with the shepherd Endymion. The plot is helter-skelter, Anne Ridler’s translation of Giovanni Faustini’s libretto is sassy and fun. I can’t imagine being more entertained by an evening’s chamber opera.

What do you go to the opera for? The question has a thousand answers, but if you’re going to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, the chances are that you’re expecting some frothy romantic comedy, some elegant music and a bunch of tunes that will stay in your head when the show is over.

There’s something pretty special about going to see one of the very first operas ever written. It’s particularly special if you love the rhythms of renaissance dance music, the harmonies of polyphonic choral music and if, as I am, you are an admirer of Claudio Monteverdi’s vocal writing: it’s quite plausible to argue that he remains unmatched in his ability to spin a beautiful vocal thread and wea

Set in the wonderful theatre upstairs at the Gatehouse pub in Highgate, Hampstead Garden Opera’s new production of L’Orfeo by Monteverdi contained some memorable images and richly resonant chorus passages.

Production director Daisy Evans welcomes her audience to Così fan tutte set in October 1943 in Sicily. The set (designed by Katharine Heath) is intriguing, with three propellers along the back wall of the performance space and a small stage at the side set up for an Ensa troupe. However, concerns about the pitfalls of “concept” productions were confirmed from the start.

They say that Violetta in La Traviata is one of opera's hardest soprano parts. Violetta changes character completely over the opera's three acts – all the way from voracious party girl to delicate, dying consumptive – and the singer must be in complete control of the role to make this work. The musical part, of course, is hardly easy either.

There is usually a good reason why operas which lie unperformed for many years do so – some flaw in the plotting, characters who fail to interest an audience, or musical langueurs. It was therefore with somewhat low expectations that I went to Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of Vaughan Williams’ Hugh the Drover. Imagine my surprise and delight.

We are in a small Cotswold market town in 1810. It's the height of the Napoleonic wars, fear of Bonapartist spies abounds. A stranger rolls into town - a roving man whose profession is rounding up wild horses for the military - and wins the hand of the daughter of the town Constable in a bare knuckle prize fight. Somehow, you just know that there's going to be trouble.

Chamber opera - or, more often, pub opera - seems to be flourishing in London at the moment, with half a dozen companies actively putting on reduced productions. The latest of these to take place at my local theatre is Opera London's version of Il Trovatore, somewhat reduced down to two hours and performed with just a piano.

When the king of the gods falls head over heels in love with you, seriously bad stuff happens. If you're a Handelian soprano like Semele, however, it happens very tunefully and in a thoroughly pleasant, elegant and cheerful manner for the whole evening.If you're confused as to the difference between opera and oratorio, Semele is the perfect aid to your confusion.

No wonder the 1744 audience was shocked by this “oratorio” which, far from drawing on Biblical themes, displays before us the sexual misdemeanor of the immortal Jove, with a mortal, Semele.

Last night at North London’s Gatehouse theatre saw the Merry Opera Company perform La Belle Hélène, Offenbach’s Trojan War parody of Grand Opera, translated/re-worked by Kit Hesketh-Harvey and enticingly re-labelled Troy Boy. Hesketh-Harvey is best known as half of the cabaret duo Kit and the Widow, but has also been a regular translator of opera for the ENO and others.

It might be a useful “rule of thumb” for every director of opera, to imagine the audience will be coming to the opera for the first time and view his own job as giving maximum clarity to the production he or she is working on.

Mozart's Magic Flute is so well-known and so well-loved that a director must tread a tricky path. If the production is too conventional, he is accused of being boring and hackneyed; if it's too full of clever inventive ideas, he is accused of betraying the original. Fortunately, the director has one overriding thing going for him: Mozart's music.

Mozart's La Clemenza Di Tito was written in the last year of his life around the same time as Die Zauberflöte, the Clarinet Concerto and the Requiem, when Mozart was at the height of his powers.