Bach tracked: Bach's cantatas at the Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music tonight presented the fruits of their latest postgraduate opera course with two short operas representing opposite ends of the musical timeline.Purcell’s miniature three-act opera really needs no introduction.

Conducted by Christoph Konz and directed by James Brining, Opera North’s revival of The Magic Flute remains an inventive reinterpretation of Mozart’s classic opera. 

Sir David Pountney directs a satirical take on dictatorship and the climate crisis inventively set to the music of Purcell. 

George Benjamins neue Oper beschreibt eindringlich einen durch Liebe hilflosen König – Hannigan und Degout füllen die tiefgründige Musik mit hingebungsvollem Emotionsspiel.

George Benjamin and Martin Crimp's second full scale opera is a refinement of the craft showed in Written on Skin – but the lessons are less in love and violince than in power, tension and beauty of the score.

In Siberian conditions more akin to The Winter's Tale, a revival of Robert Carsen's season setting of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream offered a warm glow at the Coliseum.