Artiste: Eric Roberts

An even cast and a simple production makes Longborough Festival Opera's latest foray into aristocratic misdeeds a success.

Opera North's The Barber of Seville directed by Giles Havergal at the Grand Theatre Leeds is supremely theatrical and a classic in all senses of the word.

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.