Artiste: Colin Lee

The singing is strong and the stagework slick in Laurent Pelly's rib-tickling, often uproarious production of Le Comte Ory.

The nationality of Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment is as confused as that of its eponymous heroine. Written by a homesick Italian expatriate for that most Parisian of venues the Opéra-Comique, it both continued Donizetti's Italian colonisation of the Paris opera scene (much bemoaned by Berlioz) and showed him adapting his style to the conventions of French theatre.

Gaetano Donizetti's commedia dell'arte-inspired Don Pasquale is one of the favourites in the opera buffa repertoire. At its ending, the assembled company boisterously enjoin us to remember that when an elderly man marries a much younger woman, no good can result.Apparently, the same is not true of an elderly conductor joining a much younger orchestra.