Artiste: Lawrence Olsworth-Peter

OperaUpClose have set their version of Verdi’s classic in the 1920s, with some beautiful period costumes and a few prettily observed production details It’s a big story on a very small scale.

Mozart’s original The Magic Flute is bizarre enough. The story of a prince and a bird-catcher’s journey to save a princess they’ve never met from a sinister quasi-Freemason who turns out to be alright, it is sufficiently packed full of great songs and good humour to have become an enduring repertory favourite – but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. It doesn’t, really. It is a daft opera.