Performer: Matthew Best

Heroes emerge in adversity, and there are sterling turns from Leigh Melrose as a pugilistic Golaud and from the venerable Arkel of Matthew Best.

McDermott envisages Aida as a sister production to his team's mesmeric Akhnaten. But would the hypnotic juggling and glacial choreography work for Giuseppe Verdi's Nile epic?

This Peter Grimes was a tale of two talents: the conductor and the star.

Dmitri Tcherniakov turns Shostakovich's "satirical tragedy" into a riveting piece of theatre, help by an outstanding performance from Patricia Racette and a top class orchestral performance from new ENO Musical Director Mark Wigglesworth.

Julian Anderson’s Thebans, a bold attempt at condensing Sophocles’ three Theban plays into a single opera. The result is a powerful piece of theatre which drags the audience into the story of Oedipus’s horrific downfall and death, with its ensuing civil war.

In the revival of David Alden's Peter Grimes at English National Opera, the singing is excellent, the orchestral performance is out of the top drawer and the staging hardly puts a foot wrong.