Venue: Arcola Theatre Studio 1, London

She came, she saw, she conquered. Serbian soprano Radoslava Vorgić steals the show as a radiant Cleopatra in Grimeborn Opera Festival's Giulio Cesare in Egitto. 

Julia Mintzer’s feminist twist on Marschner for Gothic Opera is a scream as Der Vampyr opens the 17th Grimeborn festival in Dalston. 

Grimeborne's lopsided production of Miss Haversham's Wedding Night and 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson is both trick and treat.

Jonathan Dove's lean reduction of Wagner’s score for just 18 players is performed at the Grimeborn Festival in Julia Burbach's staging. 

A double bill from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Tarik O'Regan gives us two unsettling portraits of women whose lives have been indelibly touched by the eternal: an unamed Victorian medium, and the Virgin Mary. 

A Madama Butterfly from beyond the grave? What would Julia Burbach's concept add to the familiar thread of Puccini's opera? 

A disappointingly po-faced and directorally hidebound production almost takes the shine off a superb Daphne starring Justine Viani, with an exciting Peneios from Welsh bass James Gower. 

A double geriatric sex scene, and real-life bunny boiling, are crude gimmicks which fail to rescue a flaccid, complacent 40 minutes courtesy of Ergo Phizmiz.