Performer: Jacqueline Coats

Gareth Farr re-orchestrates Gluck in Neil Ieremia's imaginative reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth for New Zealand Opera. 

Giordano Bellincampi presides over a fleet and crisp performance of Beethoven's only opera, performed in Auckland Town Hall. 

It was hard not to be drawn in by the romance and tragedy as presented by such a sincere, credible and vocally talented young cast and a conductor with such strong identification with the idiom.