Desperate Housewives and Troy Boys

Mozart’s original The Magic Flute is bizarre enough. The story of a prince and a bird-catcher’s journey to save a princess they’ve never met from a sinister quasi-Freemason who turns out to be alright, it is sufficiently packed full of great songs and good humour to have become an enduring repertory favourite – but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. It doesn’t, really. It is a daft opera.

They say that Violetta in La Traviata is one of opera's hardest soprano parts. Violetta changes character completely over the opera's three acts – all the way from voracious party girl to delicate, dying consumptive – and the singer must be in complete control of the role to make this work. The musical part, of course, is hardly easy either.

Riccardo Chailly’s final new production as artistic director is a celebration of Verdi and of a conductor whose relationship with the Milanese audience has clearly deepened over the years.

The German premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando at the Komische Oper cements it as a postmodern grand opéra – for better or for worse.

Emerging from different incarnations of Leah Purcell’s play, George Palmer’s opera develops traditional Dreaming elements from Aboriginal mythology, premiering in Brisbane. 

In Helsinki, Antony McDonald pairs Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta with a staged version of Sibelius’ tone poem Luonnotar, brilliantly voiced by soprano Silja Aalto.