Artiste: John Easterlin

After an absence of nearly a quarter-century, Humperdinck's evergreen returns to Seattle Opera in a winningly staged, musically sensitive production that looks beneath the fairy-tale surface.

Director Keith Warner's Royal Opera production of Berg's Wozzeck makes a truly cathartic experience that fully deserved the long ovation it received, with strong performances from Simoin Keenlyside and Karita Mattila.

During the opening night of Anna Nicole at BAM, I found myself experiencing a case of déjà vu. New York City Opera was electrifying the Howard Gilman Opera House with a work by a living composer featuring the salacious story of a female protagonist whose life was splashed across tabloids, and at one point even featuring an act of fellatio with the disjointed music carrying on in the background.

It wasn’t surprising that English National Opera’s UK première of The Perfect American was one of the most eagerly anticipated productions of the summer. Based on a fictitious narrative by Peter Stephan Jungk, the opera offers a timely glance behind the plush curtains of Walt Disney’s animated feature films.

Describing its new production of Francesco Cavalli’s 1668 opera Eliogabalo, the Gotham Chamber Opera compares the exploits of titular depraved Roman emperor Heliogabalus to Salome. There’s an obvious mistake here: Salome is an opera; Heliogabalus was a historical figure.

As The Flying Dutchman nears its close, the crew of Daland's ship are celebrating their safe homecoming and yelling at the Dutchman's unseen crew to join them. To their horror, they realise that they have indeed woken the dead: the Dutchman's crew are ghosts who have wandered the oceans for centuries: the storms cannot burst their sails for they are protected by Satan.