Performer: Jennifer Wilson

Balázs Kovalik's new dystopian Turandot is musically rousing but let down by a production that's more 1970s TV series than slick modern sci-fi. 

Given the spate of visually distracting, if not irksome productions which seem to blight the opera world these days, there is something to be said for concert performances.

An uneven yet unforgettable performance, thanks to conductor Jaap van Zweden’s seductive colouring of the score and Jennifer Wilson’s refulgent Isolde.

Roberto De Simone's staging evokes a fabulous out-of-time China, and perfectly accompanies the majesty of Puccini’s last and unfinished opera. De Simone chooses to stop the opera at the point of Puccini's death, without Franco Alfano's finale.

For an inventive production, fine singing and magnificent orchestral playing, this new Leipzig Die Frau ohne Schatten deserves every success.

Andris Nelsons followed up his 2012 Tristan und Isolde with a stirring performance of Wagner’s breakthrough work, Der fliegende Holländer, with a fine array of soloists and the CBSO in Birmingham. At a little over two hours, The Flying Dutchman is one of Wagner’s shorter operas, but it shares its supernatural themes with many of his other works.