Performer: Oliver Mears

Sir Mark Elder celebrates 50 years at Covent Garden by returning to his first opera there in 1976 – Verdi's Rigoletto – in a revival of Oliver Mears' excellent 2021 production.

Oliver Mears' new staging impresses and Jakub Hrůša's first season as Music Director excites interest. But the evening belongs to Anna Netrebko.

Superb Handelian singing and intense character acting light up Handel’s Semele, staged as a stark, uncompromising indictment of the rich and powerful. 

Henry Neill gives a devastating performance as Sam in Trouble in Tahiti in The Royal Opera’s Bernstein double bill in the Linbury Theatre. 

Handel's last oratorio is stylishly set in the composer’s era, with an all-star cast of Handelian singers who give their all.

It's been a long wait since Cardiff Singer 2015, but the Mongolian baritone gives an outstanding vocal portrayal of Verdi’s doomed jester at the Royal Opera House.

Director of Opera, Oliver Mears, was filmed trying to remove a Palestine flag raised by a performer during the final curtain call for Il trovatore. RBO has since said their “goal is to act with integrity and compassion.”

Covent Garden's Director of Opera talks about directing opera, moving from a start-up to a behemoth and how The Royal Opera hopes to exit from the pandemic.