Performer: Robert Anthony Gardiner

ETO's charactistically clear, simple production conveys Homer's story with clarity, confidence, and charm – and even humour – from a fine cast, making an exciting start to fully-staged opera at Saffron Hall. 

Two little-known 18th-century operas are given inventive new productions featuring some promising young singers.

As a very generous birthday present for ‘Accrington’s Finest’, Harrison Birtwistle, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martin Brabbins pulled out all the stops to give a revelatory performance of the composer’s most Wagnerian opera, Gawain.

The scene in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin where the peasants, weary from gathering in the harvest, sing and dance for the woman who owns the estate (and, for that matter, owns them) is perhaps not the best example of gritty social realism in opera.

The set for this Faust is a series of blank screens, which slide about quickly and frequently, tall canvases for constantly changing images provided by Berlin-based video artist Lillevan.

Bampton Classical Opera is a company dedicated to performing rarely-performed 18th-century operas, and every summer they stage a new production with a cast of young and upcoming singers at their base in Bampton in Oxfordshire. This year’s production was a double-bill of French opéras comiques by Philidor and Grétry, which they brought to London’s St John’s Smith Square last week.