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Così fan tutte is a fun-filled night at the State Opera of South Australia, well cast and continuously entertaining without sacrificing musical or vocal values. 

It's taken two years for Jack Furness' new production of Dvořák's greatest opera to reach the Garsington stage, but it is entirely worth the wait, with a breathtaking performance from Natalya Romaniw in the title role.

The Hallé and conductor Stephen Bell usher in 2022 with a joyful Viennese concert of music by the Strauss family and other composers. 

As a hybrid of brilliance and disappointment, this Don Giovanni is in a class of its own.

English Touring Opera's triple bill of early Baroque miniatures promised an intruiging evening but failed up to expectations. 

Nevill Holt Opera and Royal Northern Sinfonia offer a sumptuous production, with gorgeous singing, but one unafraid to make us confront the uncomfortable aspects of the plot.

La Cenerentola is the final component of Opera North's fairytale season, with every voice and every character getting a chance to revel in Rossini's intricate ornamentation.

A somewhat overly manic production of Luigi Rossi's version of the Orpheus tale, originally written for the French court in 1647, is lit up by some great singing and a show-stealing comic performance by Graeme Broadbent.

Bard SummerScape made musical history by presenting the first full staging of British composer Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers. Born in 1858 and dying in 1944, Smyth was celebrated in her day (John Singer Sargent painted her portrait in 1901) not only for her compositions, but for being an openly bisexual member of the suffrage movement.

James Conway’s production of La bohème may be a little restrained on banter, but hits all the emotional high notes, is compellingly played and superbly sung. 

An operatic thiller? Can such a thing exist? With an edgy score, Søren Nils Eichberg’s opera Glare tries hard to convince, at least initially.

The impressively well-drilled children’s chorus dominates this glittering production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the second component of Opera North’s Festival of Britten. 20 young performers in white, black wings on their fairy shoulders, wind solemnly in and out of the action, assemble in rows, perform versions of callisthenics exercises, and sing beautifully.

Britten’s only Shakespeare opera was a last-minute commission to celebrate the opening of the refurbished Jubilee Hall at the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival. Despite the narrow timescale, Britten and his collaborator and partner Peter Pears notoriously strove to adhere to the sixteen-century dramatic text as closely as possible. Only a handful of Shakespeare’s original lines were substantially modified.

Otto Nicolai’s very German take on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor was a big hit in the mid-19th century but has been infrequently performed since then, largely because Verdi’s version, Falstaff, completely eclipsed it.