Performer: Serena Farnocchia

Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is perhaps most famous for a single and highly emotional scene in which two monarchs engage in a venomous confrontation. One is doomed to die. 

A vividly dramatic take on Verdi's Requiem by Opera Australia allows chorus and orchestra to shine under Renato Palumbo, and reminds us why the work has been called “opera in church clothing”.

Puccini’s score has many thrilling moments, here taken up by a fascinating if uneven cast of singers.

A neglected work in Hungary, Idomeneo receives an intense performance under the baton of György Vashegyi.

Theatre director Christoph Marthaler is renowned – if notorious – for his “off the wall” productions and adherence to bad boy antics. This Viaggio was no exception.

Jonathan Kent claims one of the great difficulties of Mozart-Da Ponte’s 1787 dramma giocoso is ‘the collision of an extraordinary variety of music and mood within it’