Piotr Beczala fires up for La bohème

A Polish tenor with the talent and the confidence to speak out against the avant-garde at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House

The Enchanted Pig

The magic of The Enchanted Pig is that it can, like all the best legends and fairytales, be enjoyed on different levels

Moving Othello has the first black British lead

Graham Vick’s Birmingham Opera Company encourages audience participation in Verdi’s late Shakespearian tragic masterpiece

Should opera be made child’s play?

If you want your kids to appreciate opera, is it best to drop them in at the deep end or give them their own shows?

My first opera, by those in the know

Simon Callow, Philip Pullman and others recount their first experiences of the art form and what they made of it

Handel's Messiah: ENO

Deborah Warner's effort is a turgid charity case for affluent opera goers, her basic premise is by now a well-worn cliché

Thomas Allen's long journey to stardom

It’s been a long journey from pit village to global opera stardom, but the baritone hasn’t forgotten his roots — or the folk songs...

The Magic Flute

The Royal College of Music haven’t exactly helped their singers by opting for Mozart in the original German

Placido's new pitch

Placido Domingo, the world’s most famous tenor, is taking on the baritone title role of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra

Putting the boot in

The kitsch design and past-it singers in the Royal Opera’s production of Tsarina’s Slippers just don't work

Messiah

English National Opera’s attempt to stage a masterpiece wasn’t Messiah. It wasn’t even shocking. Just embarrassingly lame

Is race opera’s final frontier?

For the first time in the UK, a black tenor is performing as Otello. So is opera now colour-blind, asks Neil Fisher

Another fine Messiah?

Deborah Warner is directing a new production of Handel’s much used and abused sacred masterpiece for ENO

The Tsarina’s Slippers

Although Francesca Zambello’s staging of this hybrid opera-ballet is enchanting, it cannot totally hide the work’s flaws

Lucy Crowe makes her ROH debut

The singer prepares to lead as Sophie in Richard Strauss’s popular neo-rococo romantic comedy, Der Rosenkavalier

Semele

Jupiter’s mistress meets Manuel from Fawlty Towers in an oddly accented staging of the opera by some talented young singers

Swanhunter

Jonathan Dove’s new opera is consummately theatrical and successfully conjures a multitude of moods from scanty means

Into the monster's lair

ENO’s pairing of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and The Rite of Spring is bracing and memorable for Paul Driver

Passion, betrayal and love in a hot climate

Letters of a Love Betrayed brings South America to the Traverse