Performer: Christophoros Stamboglis

Richard Wagner, reviewing La Reine de Chypre for the Dresden Abend-Zeitung, praised Halévy's opera as “decidedly the best that has appeared on the Opéra's boards since Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots”. It's impossible not to agree. 

Glyndebourne's annual performance at the Proms proves dramatically untraditional but musically solid.

Annabel Arden's new production, although decently sung and visually striking, is seriously under-directed, allowing forced acting to blunt the humour.

Grange Park’s Samson et Dalila doesn’t hit the bull’s eye, but it’s well worth the visit for a decent all-round staging of an unfamiliar work, an excellent rendering of its sumptuous score and for a thrilling piece of singing by Carl Tanner.

James Gaffigan, aided by a fine cast of soloists led by the full-blooded Rigoletto of Dimitri Platanias, demonstrated that Verdi's powerfully dramatic music does not need staging to keep the audience captivated.

A classical setting and a varying degree of vocal and dramatic success for Mozart's miraculous score to Le nozze di Figaro.