Performer: Alexandrina Pendatchanska

Sir David McVicar's grim and creepy take on Verdi's Macbeth, backed up by brilliant conducting from Speranza Scappucci and a fine performance of the title role by Quinn Kelsey, is the best thing seen at the COC since lockdown.

René Jacobs conducted the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an outstanding performance of Mozart's Idomeneo as part of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival

An opera that pokes fun at opera seria? An opera that features backstage preparations for a show, followed by an opera within an opera? No, it’s not Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. 

In director Daniel Slater’s production at Santa Fe Opera this summer, Freud is God, and a biblical saga of lust, incest and murder is presented through a Viennese, turn-of-the-century lens. 

One thing is for sure: whether you like Baroque opera or not, you will never be bored by an opera conducted by René Jacobs. By shaking up convention with his subtle readings, sometimes even rewriting the composer’s score, the Belgian conductor is the one of those rare few who always find an elegant way to bring the repetitive mannerisms of the Baroque to life.

With two happy endings, two recognition scenes, and a second act that seems more of a self-contained sequel than a conclusion to the first, Gluck’s Telemaco has come in for a musicological pasting over the years for its alleged weaknesses of dramatic content and construction.