Artiste: Alastair Moore

Olivia Fuchs solves the problems of Britten's thorny opera in a brilliant new production that hits the heights, featuring Mark Le Brocq as earthbound scholar, Gustav von Aschenbach.  

Welsh National Opera brought a cast of strong voices to Birmingham for a production of Rigoletto intriguingly set in the White House of the 1960s. 

The cavernous Mayflower pit eats singers for breakfast and only Natalya Romaniw’s full-blooded Tatyana escaped its jaws unmarked