Performer: Julia Riley

Updating 470BC Abydos to a 1940s RAF base complete with tin hangar and outdoor privy seemed at times more Dad’s Army than a particularly cohesive tale of war and love.

Sonya Yoncheva shines in a production which proves that the story of Verdi's opera still feels current today.

Die Zauberflöte may well tell us something about the Human Condition, but its staging in Zurich serves more to distract from the music and the messages than it does to support them.