Performer: Erik Slik

Director Ola Mafaalani has created an absorbing and completely cinematic version of the opera, combining stationary and handheld cameras to create a pictorial variety of perspectives and expressionistic framing

In the final instalment of aus LICHT, the Helicopter String Quartet lives up to the publicity hype and choirs perform marvellous feats.

Performing both works for the first time, the RCO capered crisply through Shostakovich’s Suite from The Nose and played sumptuously in Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, with captivating songstress Wende.

With its monumental sets designed by Anish Kapoor, Pierre Audi’s abstract Parsifal at Dutch National Opera is spectacular, led by the excellent Christopher Ventris, with Günther Groissböck shining in his role debut as Gurnemanz. 

Jonathan Dove’s new opera about the foolhardy destruction of nature receives an open-air world première with fiery special effects against an evocative historical backdrop.

Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is a coloratura soprano vehicle and this season’s Dutch National Opera production felicitously starred Jessica Pratt, an internationally celebrated Lucia and a favourite of the Italian public.