Performer: Mary Plazas

Rossini's Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra is a hard work to love and English Touring Opera's new production which launched at the Hackney Empire Theatre struggled to make a case for regular outings.

Top accolades go to soprano Mary Plazas, whose Duchess was at once despicable for her sense of entitlement and her racist and anti-Semitic views, and heartbreakingly vulnerable with her realisation at the end that "the only people who were ever good to me were paid for it".

To describe this revival of Puccini's much-loved Madam Butterfly as a visual spectacle would be to do it a disservice. Originally directed by Anthony Minghella in its first outing in 2005, it is one of ENO's greatest success stories.