Performer: Angharad Lyddon

Amid the rough winds of late May, Julia Burbach directs Opera Holland Park's first venture into Wagner – The Flying Dutchman. 

Vladimir Jurowski's six-year Ring with the LPO closes as the cycle began: a gleaming, golden ring with a black hole at its core. 

Using Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick's distillations of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the company concluded its miniature Ring cycle in under five hours, without sacrificing musical or dramatic tension.

Some exceptional singing intermittently enlivens Daniel Slater's production which, dramatically and emotionally, takes time to ignite.   

Britten's four lovers were costumed in quasi-contemporary, even glamorous manner, stripping to their underwear for the end of Act 2... so more Love Island than Ancient Athens.

In a new production at The Grange Festival, Elin Pritchard's performance of Puccini's titular heroine in this 1940s-era update is a tour de force.