Mamzer Bastard, Royal Opera, Hackney Empire review - inert Hasidic music-drama

★ MAMZER BASTARD Inert Hasidic music-drama

Sludgy orchestral lines and ungainly word-setting in Na'ama Zisser's new opera

Striking it lucky with a successful new opera is a rare occurrence, though every company has a duty to keep on trying. The Royal Opera hit the jackpot with 4.48 Psychosis, a highly original approach to Sarah Kane's profound and authentic play by Philip Venables, the first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence on the scheme initiated by Covent Garden in alliance with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. How could one not wish his successor, Israel-born Na'ama Zisser, all the best?

Acis and Galatea, English National Opera, Lilian Baylis House review - Handel for the hashtag generation

★★★ ACIS AND GALATEA, ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA Handel for the hashtag generation

This insta-update is hard to 'like'

If you go to ENO’s Acis and Galatea expecting a grassy knoll draped decoratively with a Watteau shepherdess or two then you may be disappointed. Launched in 2017, the company’s reliably punchy Studio Live strand (stripped-back, small-scale, off-site performances) continues here with Handel’s “little opera”, reinvented for the Instagram age. #Nymphsandshepherds #Flockthis

Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - no weak link

★★★★★ GIULIO CESARE, GLYNDEBOURNE Glyndebourne at its best just got better

Glyndebourne at its best just got better

What a great show, on every level. David McVicar’s Glyndebourne production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, originally staged in 2005, and in its third revival this year, has a cast without a weak link, and never fails to draw in the audience to the work’s cycles of power, suffering, death and intermittent triumph. It brings us deep into the mind and essence of every character. And holds us right there.

Un ballo in maschera, Grange Park Opera review – singing out against the American grain

★★★★ UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, GRANGE PARK OPERA Singing out against the American grain

High-concept Yankee Verdi benefits from some Old World style

Stumble across Grange Park Opera’s new brick-clad “Theatre in the Woods”, nestled amid a labyrinth of gardens and orchards next to the rambling Tudor pile of West Horsley Place in Surrey, and on a mild June evening you may feel as if you have fallen into some Home Counties version of a magic-realist novel.

Lohengrin, Royal Opera review - swan mystery musically illuminated

★★★★ LOHENGRIN, ROYAL OPERA Swan mystery musically illuminated

Great conductor Andris Nelsons floats a mostly fine cast in a mostly clichéd production

It's awfully long for a fairytale in which a mystery prince helps a damsel in distress, and she asks him the question she shouldn't. Myth tends to go deeper, as Wagner did in The Ring of the Nibelung after Lohengrin. Here he captures the magic of transformation and transcendence, but in between there's too much hard-to-stage pomp.

La finta semplice, Classical Opera, QEH review - consummate musicianship stokes early Mozart

★★★★ LA FINTA SEMPLICE, CLASSICAL OPERA Consummate musicianship stokes early Mozart

At 12, he was a very clever boy rather than a genius, but style carries this comic opera

You can always be sure of impeccable casting and spirited playing as Ian Page takes his Classical Opera through Mozart year by year. Just don't expect more than the glimmer of genius to come in 1768, though. It doesn't matter in those admirable showcase programmes highlighting the young Amadeus alongside more mature voices of the year in question.

Der fliegende Holländer, Longborough Festival review - stand and deliver on an empty stage

★★ DER FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER, LONGBOROUGH FESTIVAL Stand and deliver on empty stage

Wagner's early brilliance dimmed by patchy singing and plodding direction

Brilliant and innovative though it is in many respects, The Flying Dutchman is by no means a straightforward piece to stage. It’s an odd, sometimes uncomfortable mixture of the genre and the epic. At Sadler’s Wells in the sixties they had a little ship and a big ship that hove into view, a fishing village, sailors with tankards and striped shirts, and girls at looms.

Michael Chance on continuing opera in Hampshire: 'good people like to work with good people'

MICHAEL CHANCE ON THE GRANGE FESTIVAL 'Good people like to work with good people'

The countertenor turned impresario launches a second season of The Grange Festival

Out of the blue comes a phone call. A freelance career is based on those to a certain extent. Certainly mine has been. But this one was a bit different. “Would you come and talk to us about the way forward?”. I soon learnt that what this actually meant was, “would you launch and run a new opera festival for us?”