Performer: Alan Curtis

Every early music festival these days needs one or more star countertenors in their programme. At this year’s Müpa Budapest’s Régizene Fesztival, Valer Barna-Sabadus was featured together with homegrown soprano Emöke Bárath.

Conductor Alan Curtis and musicologist Alessandro Ciccolini have successfully restored Vivaldi's opera Catone in Utica, and they brought it to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris with a star performance from mezzo Ann Hallenberg.

When on Sunday afternoon Joyce DiDonato came onstage at Carnegie Hall, the savvy New York audience gave her a truly royal reception by welcoming her with a long ovation. Such a reaction from the audience was hardly surprising.