Origami birds flock in graceful chorus, a dancer flutters two fans into a pulsing captive butterfly, curtains of cherry blossom descend over glowing paper lanterns, and of course a small bunraku puppet steals the show. Seven years on Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly is as beautiful as ever, and – if possible – even more Japanese.

Obsession and redemption, the twin themes of Wagner's ghostly earliest masterpiece, are two words that could just as pertinently be applied to Jonathan Kent's new production for English National Opera. Obsession is how many non-diehard Wagner opera-goers will view Kent's decision to stage this opera as a continuous pieceit' of drama with no interval. Sure, Wagner originally considered a single-act work, but he quickly dropped the idea. He never conducted or endorsed a staging without a break.

Forget opera-glasses, the must-have accessory for the contemporary opera-goer in London is fast becoming a sturdy pair of wellingtons. No sooner had we all dried off from our voyage into The Heart of Darkness at the Royal Opera House (where Edward Dick’s watery set lapped dangerously close to the orchestra pit) than we find ourselves up to our knees in the boggy marshlands and treacherous pools of Sam Brown’s Jakob Lenz.

Who does the PR these days for Middle Eastern extremists? Whoever it is clearly wasn’t on board when the Palestine Liberation Front decided to whack the Achille Lauro. Or wasn’t aware that chucking a wheelchair-bound pensioner into the Med was the sort of move unlikely to garner widespread international support for the cause.

In October 1985 four Palestinian terrorists boarded the Achille Lauro cruise liner, took the 400-odd passengers hostage, shot an old disabled American Jew dead and flung his body overboard. Of all the many atrocities in the long war between the Palestinians and Israelis the murder of Leon Klinghoffer has always struck me as being one of the more morally cut and dried incidents. Hardly worthy of any kind of lengthy debate, let alone dramatic exposition.

For all its comic fantasy and lilting tunes, there’s nothing pastel-coloured about Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Deaths are frequent and bloody, humour is macabre, and emotions run high – being late to the pub is cause enough for violence and conspiracy theories. It’s a world of sliding screens, where a smile always threatens to become a leer, a kiss a murder. Who better (who else?) to inhabit this operatic fantasy-land than Richard Jones, a director who relishes the elision and collision of kitsch and the grotesque.

As in sex, so it is in music: there’s a lot riding on the climax. The celebrated third act trio of Der Rosenkavalier is arguably the most famous orgasm in music – dear reader, can you name a better one? – but time it wrongly and you’ll regret it. There is, however, absolutely nothing regrettable about this A-list cast in the hands of director David McVicar and conductor Edward Gardner. Theirs is the most assured, most riveting Rosenkavalier in this country for years.