Performer: Nicolas Cavallier

Having all but faded from memory, the Swiss composer’s hybrid work takes the audience by surprise. Yet the musical direction and the cast do it justice – in stark contrast to the flat staging.

Opéra Grand-Avignon presents Lakmé in a production that charms visually as much as it does musically.

With outstanding performances from Roberto Alagna and Paul Gay, Pierre Corneille's elegant poetry shines through the return of Massenet's Le Cid to the Opéra de Paris, more than a century after it was last seen there.

A revival of Chris Alexander's comedy-slanted take on Don Giovanni tames Mozart's subversive opera in Seattle's season opener.

Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann is a fine example of how the ridiculous can indeed be sublime. Three E.T.A. Hoffmann stories about otherworldly love affairs with defective femmes fatales, one of whom turns out to be a mechanical doll, connected only by the author’s gullible alter-ego as protagonist, scale the heights of the phantasmagorical.