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In two equally impressive performances, students from the RNCM star in these two one-act operas.

Hats off to Andreas Homoki, Artistic Director at the Zurich Opera House, for staging a musical around “the chill of ghostly shadows”.

Jane Archibald gave possibly the most dazzling account of Cunegonde's music that I’ve heard. 

Outstanding vocal and orchestral performances light up La Scala's season opener, matched to a conservative but visually arresting staging from Davide Livermore.

A new production of La Traviata, colorful and conventional, brings little new ideas but is a fine vehicle for a fine performance conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin that features a trio of excellent singers.

Opera Atelier presents a double bill at the Royal Opera in Versailles filled with Baroque dancing, scenery and music.

Opera North's triumphant UK première production of Silent Night by Kevin Puts is directed at Leeds Town Hall by Tim Albery and conducted by Nicholas Kok.

Charles Villiers Stanford's The Travelling Companion is performed at Cadogan Hall by New Sussex Opera. 

Barrie Kosky's troubled production returns to Covent Garden

Perhaps Pinchgut Opera's finest production to date, a brave presentation of a classic Baroque opera, little heard in Australia apart from Handel, benefits from the star presence of Vivca Genaux in splendid form.

Joyful, enthusiastic singing, dancing and music combined for a very entertaining The Merry Widow with delightfully cast lead roles. 

Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is a nuanced, gripping tale that should pack an emotional punch. Despite fine moments, Oper Köln's production didn't serve the work. 

The Kungliga Operan presents a stagnant production of Verdi’s masterpiece, with a competent cast comprised mostly of Swedish singers.

Jonathan Miller's production of La bohème is revived by ENO and features an important house debut. 

All three operas in Puccini's triptych are strongly cast in this revival. 

A clever production enlivens a rare, early opera at the Donizetti Opera Festival. A fantastic cast and a great period orchestra seal a resounding success under the lead of Alessandro De Marchi.

Excellent musical performances are confounded by clumsy, unimaginative staging in Rameau's explosive first opera.

Serious farce, warm-hearted sarcasm, operatic Broadway: Barrie Kosky and Komische Oper turn Bernstein's problem child into a show that thrills from start to finish.

Michael Barker-Caven sets Aida in a 21st-century war zone in the Middle-East, allowing the audience to focus on the human drama.

The Donizetti Opera Festival presents a rarity with a good cast of bel canto specialists in a somewhat disappointing production.

Even given a routine revival, McVicar's staging has much to recommend it, returning the opera to its literary roots. 

This is one of Michieletto's simplest stagings yet, the imagery used to a minimum to allow for focus on the psychological core.

Mark Elder and the LPO's performance of Puccini's Le Willis proved interesting and frustrating in equal measure, rescued by a star performance from Ermonela Jaho.

A wonderfully realized production at San Francisco Opera of Jake Heggie's operatic version of a holiday classic. 

Grigorian returns to Stockholm in a wonderful performance of Madama Butterfly, with young, upcoming tenor Migran Agadzhanyan as Pinkerton in a 2014 production by Kirsten Harms.

Performing arts duo Ricci/Forte throw what feels like the entire directorial arsenal at this production.

Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel has appeal for all ages, but Robert Carsen’s production is a different take on the beloved fairy tale.

Having offered a strong feminist reading of Wagner's Ring, could Kasper Holten do the same again for Die Meistersinger? Opera Australia's co-production had moments of excellence, but ultimately left the viewer with more questions than answers

Susan Graham had all the fun every mezzo-soprano witch, who can sing the role and disguise herself – when necessary – to look the part, deserves. 

The second performance of the Met's Pearl Fishers saw one of the leads withdraw mid-performance again. A welcome performance by young baritone Alexander Birch Elliott could not rescue the evening. 

The music’s explosions of volume have an open-throated magnificence.

An impressively cast revival for Verdi's one-time neglected masterpiece at Covent Garden.

Never before has human impotence been so cruelly portrayed on stage.

The Trøndelag Teater presents an opéra comique by André Grétry in a brilliant production by Julien Lubek and Cécile Roussat, under the inspired musical direction of Martin Wåhlberg.

Royal Academy Opera maintains its usual high standards in a production of Handel’s operatic oratorio, a showcase for the singers of the future.

Mefistofele proves a mixed blessing: good meets evil, devils fight with angels, lovely lyricism alternates with bombast and second-rate material.

With a semi-staged production, directed by Benjamin Davis, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra has also been bringing George Benjamin's opera to concert hall audiences.

Theater Bonn successfully tackles Kiss Me, Kate in an appropriately light production.

Mark-Anthony Turnage's First World War opera both moves and dazzles at the Barbican.

Lotte de Beer’s Il barbiere di Siviglia for Dutch National Opera seems a surprisingly traditional spectacle... although it does come with a twist.

If ever a new production of a Mozart opera had a riveting backstory, this one is it. 

Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts presents a wonderful Puccini double bill of Suor Angelica and Le villi.

A fine cast led by Maija Kovalevska conveys the timeless beauty and emotion of Puccini’s Parisian melodrama, but the 1930s Berlin setting remains an imperfectly realised transformation.

A fine cast convinces in Dutch Reisopera's new Tosca, staged in a dystopian police state.

Toby Spence, Matthew Rose and Andrew Watts shine in a fluent semi-staging at the Royal Festival Hall.

Graham Vick stages his Marriage of Figaro in todays vulgarity, but he is not fully convincing.

Despite some minor flaws, a well appreciated performance of Bellini's masterpiece. 

The Hungarian State Opera's first New York tour featured an opera of forbidden love set in the Biblical Times by Karl Goldmark, and was a rare treat for the New York audience.

Powerful and evocative imagery, both literal and implied, lingered on beyond the drop of the curtain.

The music, a combination of Italian-sounding melodies, German instrumentation and Hugarian dotted rhythms, was remarkably captivating.