Performer: Rebecca von Lipinski

Outstanding singing from a beautifully chosen cast led by Miah Persson and Hanna Hipp. 

Oper Stuttgart’s new production of The Queen of Spades (Pique-Dame) pushes a directorial tendency to update opera to a modern setting to an extreme.

Mozart's messy monster of an opera gets a brutalist tidy-up at Garsington, but the determinedly straightforward reading only makes this work's innate problems more obvious. 

The benefits of opera in concert are felt in Manchester with the BBC Philharmonic, with a performance of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. 

John Woolrich's Songbook project provided the vocal material on show at the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group recital at Wigmore Hall, featuring sopranos Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski.

Garsington Opera takes a comedic approach to Beethoven's Fidelio. The result is amusing and musically strong, but lacking in both dynamic staging and emotional depth.