Performer: Tom Schenk

Englishman Laurence Dale’s Göttingen Festival production of Handel’s Agrippina, now presented in the second Brisbane Baroque Festival, is based on the political void between appearance and reality. 

Sasha Waltz's choreography-heavy production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Sydney Festival is both intruiging and distracting, giving the singers little chance to shine.

Opera North's Death in Venice is another winner for the company in Britten's centenary year, originally directed by Yoshi Oida. Alan Oke is a successful, anguished Aschenbach.