Venue: Iford Manor, Bradford on Avon

Another masterful, sprightly and unstuffily fun production of Handel at Iford: Christopher Cowell's Partenope is erotically charged, well cast and comically compelling. 

Jeff Clarke's characteristically high-octane style seems made for the sarcastic, hyperactive existential madness that is Candide in this little gem of a production for Iford. 

An especially adapted version of Purcell's Fairy Queen, reworked by Timothy Nelson, inspires an exceptional reading from a talented young cast at Iford. 

John Savournin takes Mozart's Magic Flute on an exotic adventure into the Peruvian rainforest: and retrieves more than a sprinkling of Inca gold. 

Iford's stone cloister makes a suitably eerie setting for a fine traditional account of Verdi's Macbeth, notable for its powerful male leads, from Iford Festival Opera and the CHROMA Ensemble.

Bruno Ravella's version of Handel's Agrippina moves the action from Classical Rome to the avaricious Eighties in a sharp, amusing night at Iford.  

While it may seem perfectly formed for the full grand opera treatment, Verdi's classic Un ballo in maschera can also work extremely well on a small scale, as shown by this intimate and compelling treatment by Timothy Nelson at Iford. 

We all know the story about how an opera is supposed to end, but it turns out it is definitely not over until all the fat, black-leather-jacketed, bearded gentlemen sing, and then ride triumphantly away with you on their Harley-Davidsons...