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A historical staging with well sung arias doesn't really bring Puccini's opera alive as Rome marks its 125th anniversary. 

Alessandro Talevi production for Festival O has sight gags and vaudeville tricks aplenty and features splendid voices in a fine cast. 

It is a thing of wonder that Roberto Devereux is one of Donizetti’s lesser known works. Whether on account of its challenging soprano part, or its fussy Tudor setting, it is rarely performed, but contains some of the composer’s most beautiful – and indeed memorable – arias and duets.

Alessandro Talevi's gorgeous staging recreates Tosca as it might have been seen at its 1900 première. 

Alessandro Talevi's production of Don Giovanni, conducted by Christoph Altstaedt, receives a welcome revival at the Grand Theatre, Leeds. 

The performance of Margherita d’Anjou seen at the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca was the first staged in modern times.

Promising young South-African director Alessandro Talevi opened the new season at the Teatro La Fenice with a new mis-en-scene of Mozart's Idomeneo.

In the opening night of Teatro Real's new season, Mariella Devia proved why she is one of the best bel canto singers of the last decades.

The visual results are stunning, though an uneven cast made this a performance with clear weaknesses as well as strengths. Aquiles Machado's Cavaradossi, on the other hand, was an indubitable revelation.

Opera North's La traviata at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, makes an excellent start to Opera North's new season.

Director Alessandro Talevi’s imagination, wit and audacity meant that Don Giovanni, which has just launched Opera North’s new season, was a huge success. The production was enthralling throughout, never dragging or disappointing, even in the second act. It works much better than others I have seen, because the emphasis is placed firmly on the comic rather than the pathetic.

When one sets off to the opera to attend what is usually called a ‘double bill’, one will, most of the time, expect to see two operas clearly contrasting in character. More unusual is to find two extremely different works, hardly sharing anything between themselves, presented in a reading that digs deep for any possible echoes.