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Chrisoph Loy's new Oslo production of Eugene Onegin only somewhat succeeds in its desire to create a meditation on loneliness, but superb musical performances still make it an utterly compelling piece of music theatre.

New York City's Metropolitan Opera restages its shorter, family-friendly version of Mozart's The Magic Flute with great music and delightful visuals.

The Bavarian State Opera avoids the routine in a powerfully cast revival of Richard Jones' building-site production of Lohengrin.

The Met's revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1984 production of La clemenza di Tito is given a new breath of life with superb conducting and an excellent ensemble of singers.

Stellar voices and orcheatra and some inspired staging choices elevate an otherwise heavy-handed production of Pelléas et Mélisande from the WNO at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Christoph Loy's Oslo production of Wozzeck is a dramatic triumph, with gripping performances from a cast led by Audun Iversen's desperate title character.

Lothar Koenigs conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in some highly horizontal-oriented Bruckner and the UK première of a genial piano concerto from Wolfgang Rihm with soloist Nicolas Hodges

Strauss' 'conversation piece' of an opera is given a warmly sympathetic production with the musical rewards coming as much from the pit as the stage.

Calixto Bieito's staging of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is violent, shocking and uniquely powerful.

Romeo Castellucci's captivating Moses und Aron was a major success, a bold reminder of the boundless power of opera.

As I had both hoped and expected, Widmann's Babylon Suite had an undercurrent of knowing wickedness and a sense of self-awareness that one would find in a Stravinsky ballet score.

Robert Dean Smith replacing an ailing tenor as Lohengrin was merely adequate but the rest of the cast and the superb orchestra made the modern production of Lohengrin in Munich memorable.

Lothar Koenigs conducted a musically excellent and dramatically straightforward performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in Cardiff.

In addition to incorporating twelve-tone rows for each character and within larger musical units like canons and chorales, the entirety of the opera itself is palindromic in structure, with performers whose characters died gruesome deaths during the first act returning as new characters in the third.

Jane Archibald and Ruxandra Donose provide a compelling prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos, while Karita Mattila's majestic performance lights up the opera seria second half.

Mélisande as Lulu in David Pountney's unfulfilling production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Welsh National Opera. 

Hansel and Gretel is often treated as a children's opera, suitable for family viewing at Christmas, but as Richard Jones' production demonstrates, it is a good deal darker than that.

Lothar Koenigs conducts a stylish, colourful Magic Flute inspired by Magritte. 

A riveting performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, despite the absence of the golden calf, the burning bush, Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Treliński’s de-romanticizing of the plot of Puccini's Manon Lescaut makes for a compelling piece of theatre… it’s just not Manon. 

A great post-war classic by Henze in a strong new production from Welsh National Opera. 

A supremely entertaining and highly descriptive Symphonie fantastique from Lothar Koenigs and the Welsh National Opera Orchestra.

Welsh National Opera’s contribution to the Wagner bicentenary is in the form of a summer season entitled Wagner Dream, consisting of Jonathan Harvey’s opera of the same name, a run of Madam Butterfly, and Antony McDonald’s new production of Lohengrin. Lothar Koenigs conducted an excellent performance of Wagner’s romantic opera at a packed Wales Millennium Centre.

Is it possible for us to feel a shred of sympathy for Lulu, surely one of opera’s most notorious anti-heroines, even when she meets her grizzly demise at the coda of Berg’s eponymous masterwork? I think it speaks volumes about the astonishing quality of soprano Marie Arnet’s performance that my answer to this question after seeing Welsh National Opera’s new production of Lulu is a most definite “n

Continuing their season-long Beethoven cycle, the Hallé programmed the Fifth Symphony with a neo-romantic piano concerto by Samuel Barber and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, forming an eclectic mix of works to which orchestra and conductor responded very well.

Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos boasts the most confusing cast list of any opera. Ariadne and Bacchus feature either as themselves or as "primadonna" and "tenor", in addition to figures from Greek mythology, we get Commedia dell'arte names like Scaramuccio and Truffaldino, there are backstage characters like the composer, the music master and the wigmaker, and a spoken part of the Major-Domo.

Hosokawas hochpoetisches Dreipersonenspiel wird im Münchner „Ja, Mai“-Festival musikalisch exzellent erzählt, aber in der Verbindung mit interpretierendem Ballettgeschehen szenisch überfrachtet 

Mit ausgezeichneten sängerischen Leistungen und vorzüglichem Orchester der Staatsoper zeigte Strauss' heiter-rasantes Konversationsstück seinen musikalischen Esprit.

L'opéra de Korngold se dévoile à La Monnaie dans une mise en scène grandiose de Mariusz Treliński, mêlant le cauchemar et la perversion à la tendresse et à la rédemption.

La presentación de La flauta mágica de Vick en Les Arts prometía una intensidad subversiva que resultó tan solo una sucesión de clichés trasnochados.

Epaulée par un orchestre en pleine forme, portée par un plateau étonnant par la qualité de son jeu d'acteur, cette production touche par sa sincérité.

Die Münchner Opernfestspiele präsentierten eine Lohengrin-Produktion, die nur bedingt dem Festspielniveau entsprach.