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Shostakovich's brutal tale of sex, murder and madness storms La Scala's opening night, with Riccardo Chailly leading his final season premiere as Music Director. 

Ivor Bolton leads a great cast in a superb musical production of Mozart’s last masterpiece, in a lukewarm new production by Paul Curran.

Leonardo Garcia-Alarcón leads a crisp, charismatic account of Rameau's Les Indes galantes, where a superb cast shines and the Cappella Mediterranea thoroughly convinces.

Despite the Maggio Musicale stage being dominated by clerical garb and daring papal parallels, the true revelation is Jessica Pratt's breathtaking role debut as Lucrezia.

Alexander Soddy leads a great cast in a clever, supremely entertaining new production in Milan.

Julie Fuchs and Juan Diego Flórez give life to the refreshing and funny take of Laurent Pelly’s classic production, under the baton of Evelino Pidò. 

A Rigoletto revival in Milan is elevated by a stellar vocal performance from Amartuvshin Enkhbat, despite a finale that divides opinion and some uneven orchestral pacing. 

Rosetta Cucchi jumps on the bandwagon with a shallow production of L’italiana in Algeri, although Daniela Barcellona’s charisma and vocal prowess dominates the scene.

Rossini’s first staged opera, La cambiale di matrimonio, in a spirited production by Laurence Dale, paired with his late work Les soirées musicales in a successful performance.

A production where vocal brilliance battles directorial gimmicks in Pesaro, with a superb cast led by Anastasia Bartoli and Lawrence Brownlee.

After almost 50 years, the Teatro alla Scala presents a new production of Norma, with a great cast, some shadows in the orchestra direction and several failures in the production. 

McVicar’s most successful Ring chapter yet: Siegfried convinces with beautiful imagery and a stellar cast, with Alexander Soddy at the baton.

Davide Livermore creates a successful production of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona, with a great cast led by Mauro Borgioni. 

Cecilia Bartoli and Gianluca Capuano lead a superb performance of Orfeo ed Euridice, in semi-staged form, as a prologue to the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona. 

Christophe Rousset leads Les Talens Lyriques and a stellar cast in a superb rendition of Mozart’s first opera seria.

A great cast and an enjoyable score seal the success of a new opera based on Umberto Eco's classic historical murder mystery, The Name of the Rose. 

Christophe Rousset leads a great cast and an even greater orchestra in Gassmann’s 1769 rarity in Laurent Pelly’s visually striking, but oddly subdued, take on a comedy that thrives on chaos. 

Mario Martone’s new production is inconsistent, while the musical performance is hindered by lacklustre conducting and a miscast prima donna. 

With bad-ass punk valkyries and rich in fantasy overtones, Sir David McVicar's La Scala Ring cycle continues. 

La Scala revives Giorgio Strehler’s historic production with a solid cast led by veteran Ambrogio Maestri, under the baton of an inspired Daniele Gatti.