Performer: Virginie Verrez

A human waxwork, a lottery win and circus buffoonery combine in a long-neglected Offenbach operetta, given a fizzing performance by the forces of Opera Rara and the London Philharmonic.

Virginie Verrez acted not with fire and ice but with gallic insouciance.

Brilliant staging, superb acting, a magnetic performance from Virginie Verrez and an excellent orchestral performance make a strong case for Samuel Barber's all-but-forgotten chiller.

Rafael Payare contrasts a stentorian Brahms Symphony 4 with colorful French scores, including a scintillating Shéhérazade.

Love may well be a rebellious bird, but that's as nothing to maverick director Dmitri Tcherniakov, whose twisted staging for Festival d'Aix reimagines Bizet's opera as a radical therapy session.

As it turned out, the second performance of the Met’s revival of I puritani was the one to see – it offered some of this season’s greatest singing – and a surprise.