Performer: Mattijs van de Woerd

Performing both works for the first time, the RCO capered crisply through Shostakovich’s Suite from The Nose and played sumptuously in Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, with captivating songstress Wende.

Louis Andriessen’s new opera is a masterly expedition into the grand and grotesque mind of Athanasius Kircher, polymath and fantastist, but it is hampered by a clumsy libretto.

Martijn Padding's opera Laika is let down by its libretto, which illustrates that though authors may write successful novels, this doesn’t necessarily imply they can also produce good theatre texts.