Performer: Patricia Petibon

The Teatro Real opened its 200th anniversary season with a revival of Claus Guth's brilliant production and a great cast, led by Kurt Streit and Silvia Tro Santafé.

A Manon as sexy and unsteady as its heroine.

The 67th Aix Festival got off to a hot, heady start with Katie Mitchell's witty and ingenious staging of Handel's 1735 sorcery opera Alcina. 

Patricia Petibon manages to portray an absolutely charming Manon. She spans the space between innocence and worldliness and remains consistently energetic and delightful. 

The 2012 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence began its four-week feast of opera and music with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro—and could there be better a way? Nothing can beat the sublime company of Mozart, Da Ponte and Beaumarchais on a summer evening in the open-air Théâtre de l'Archevêché.

Never a city to shy away from seasonal programming, this Easter Vienna is offering productions of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Gounod’s Faust, and Wagner’s Parsifal. The latter two, at the Staatsoper, are familiar, but audiences should run to see the Theater an der Wien’s enthralling revival of Poulenc’s relatively rarely-produced masterwork.

Ambronay’s support for young ensembles in Early Music continues with Sustainable EEEMERGING, a new scheme to help groups get on a sure professional footing – and decarbonise too.