The Tsarina’s Slippers

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

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

Gilbert revival from life before Sullivan

Long-forgotten play No Cards is being staged by an amateur operatic society after more than a century

Bad Boys: tenors play lovers; basses play villains

Bryn Terfel is now far more than a singer. He’s a national institution, at least in the land of his fathers

L’assedio di Calais

This is a show that no Donizetti-fancier will want to miss

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Daniel Kramer has reconceived Bartók’s masterpiece as a gratuitous anthem to serial killers, rapists and paedophiles

Three stars for Renee Fleming at Festival Hall

It was a more compact display than her last London recital, but lustre there still was, and the gleam of star power

Jenufa

At first Giselle Allen as Jenufa seems just too fragile. But, thrillingly, we watch her grow, slowly and compellingly

Artaxerxes

If you see Thomas Arne’s Artaxerxes only once in your life (and once is enough), see this cast in this production

Alcina/Ariodante

The power of Handel’s invention in these operas of 1735 soon quells the fidgets, as does the strength of ETO’s productions

Wexford Festival and Glyndebourne

While a lower-key Wexford Festival lost its way, a Cosi revival for Glyndebourne tour was clearly a hit

Wexford Festival

John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles was a whirling diorama of video projection, large chorus and dancers, with never a dull moment

The Italian Girl in Algiers

At times the show’s hyperactive burlesque diminishes the tenderness built into Rossini’s score

Domingo reinvents himself as a baritone

The 68-year-old opera star, one of the legendary Three Tenors, switches to singing a deeper role at the Berlin State Opera

The Turn of the Screw

It was already the most chilling show in town but ENO’s revival of McVicar’s 2007 production turns the screw even tighter

An audience with Renée Fleming

She is America’s most-loved opera star, but she doesn’t play the grande dame offstage. She talks about the secret of success

Porgy and Bess

Cape Town Opera’s version of the Gershwin classic is full of gaiety and passion, with all the soulfulness of Soweto