West Australian Opera's Il trovatore honours Neidhardt's lesson in directorial rigour

West Australian Opera's production of Sweeney Todd was an excellent, crackling performance, with everyone involved in top form, with some unexpected players showing great talent in this not-very-operatic work.

Bizet's The Pearl Fishers has its problems, but a good account of its score does have its pleasures, especially when it's all brightened up by the presence of Emma Matthews.

Simultaneously one of the most loved and most mocked operas in the canon, Il trovatore has some of Verdi’s catchiest melodies set to one of his silliest plots. Against the backdrop of a 15th-century Spanish war, a cast of nobles, gypsies, nuns and soldiers enact a drama which hinges on that hoariest of dramatic clichés: children swapped at birth.

Divorced from Cavalleria rusticana, English Touring Opera's contemporary take on Leoncavallo's masterpiece ticks all the boxes.

Mark Ravenhill directs a brutal, bloody Salome for Regents Opera at the spiritual home of British boxing, York Hall. 

Robert Carsen's staging of Handel's oratorio arrives, via Salzburg, in the city where Handel composed it in 1707.