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For any opera house, the production of a new Wagner Ring cycle is a huge undertaking and becomes a mission statement. For Finnish National Opera, its mission is to stage an all-Finnish Ring.

In an unusually convincing concert performance, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish National Opera emphasised the lyrical aspects of Wagner's Das Rheingold.

In Thomas Guthrie’s revival of Sir David McVicar’s sober 2003 production of Mozart’s Singspiel, it was the pantomime elements of the show which registered strongly.

The opening production of the 2017 Savonlinna Opera Festival had an optimistic message, strongly delivered by a cast led by the exceptional Konstanze of Hulkar Sabirova.

Mariame Clément’s Glyndebourne production of Don Pasquale, revived here for the 2015 Tour, delivers its lesson particularly harshly. 

What do you get when you mix an old man with a penchant for younger women, a young woman, her equally young lover and a scheming doctor, and set it all sometime around the 1960s, although you wouldn’t really know it had it not been for the petticoats? A rather successful night at the opera, it would seem.