After what must seem like a long exile, the opera director with one of the most distinctive track records in the business is to return as chief executive of a company which has been on fitful form recently. As, it must be said, has Pountney's recent history after the celebrated "powerhouse" era at English National Opera alongside Mark Elder and Peter Jonas. Since then, he has veered from the trademark business verging on chaos to a tender, painstaking rediscovery of recent works which deserve our attention.

Comedian Richard Ayoade’s kinetic, charismatic and accomplished directorial debut follows an introspective adolescent with his feet clamped firmly on dry land but with his head all at sea. In Submarine, our protagonist haplessly negotiates the quagmire of first love, whilst simultaneously dealing with his parents’ romantic disillusionment.

To anyone less than familiar with a transatlantic migration of 150 souls which took place in 1865, a bilingual film with dialogue in Spanish and Welsh may look like a subtitled bridge too far. Any such prejudgement would be a mistake. Patagonia is a film rich in cinematic textures which visits not one but two ravishing parts of the world rarely celebrated in widescreen. The fact that it has a lovely little cameo from Duffy, making her acting debut and contributing (in Welsh) to the soundtrack, is an extra recommendation.

Emlyn Williams may have been dubbed the “Welsh Noël Coward” and the action of his long-neglected Accolade may take place in a drawing room, but there’s little of the smiling social comedy to be found here. Trading sparkling cocktails and repartee for whisky and unpalatable truths, Williams’s play exposes the pinstriped hypocrisy of 1950s society – a society that will press its powdered cheek to all manner of sordidness in the name of Art, while recoiling from even a passing acquaintance with the workaday squalor of its members. Frank, and more than a little apt, the result is a stylish morality play that smuggles a progressive liberal agenda in under its cassock.

Opera outside London flourishes in the hands of Opera North, Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera. In 2011 the popular hits such as Carmen, The Merry Widow and La Traviata intermingle with rarer landmarks such as From the House of the Dead, Orlando and Intermezzo. Wagner has a fine showing in the North and West from Opera North and Welsh National Opera.

The beautiful voice is no more. I know the tag has been applied recently to Renée Fleming, but for liquid-gold soprano sound, there has never been anyone to surpass Dame Margaret Price, who died yesterday in her native Wales three months short of her 70th birthday. Few singers have covered a wider range with such poise and style; in the April 2007 edition of the BBC Music Magazine we placed her Number Eight among the Top 20 Greatest Sopranos of All Time (I now recall she was Number Three on my own list, after Callas and Sutherland, of course).

The beautiful voice is no more. I know the tag has been applied recently to Renée Fleming, but for liquid-gold soprano sound, there has never been anyone to surpass Dame Margaret Price, who died yesterday in her native Wales three months short of her 70th birthday. Few singers have covered a wider range with such poise and style; in the April 2007 edition of the BBC Music Magazine we placed her Number Eight among the Top 20 Greatest Sopranos of All Time (I now recall she was Number Three on my own list, after Callas and Sutherland, of course).

The annals of rock’n’roll are littered with complacency, fading stars, and acts who’ve had it and then lost it, forever. So, after 20 years, what makes the Manics different? How come they’re still turning out hit albums? Possibly it’s their hand-on-heart, Welsh-valley principles. Maybe it’s the way they find libraries as interesting a subject as love. Or perhaps it’s the way that they keep recovering from the brink of near self-destruction. Listening to them last night, though, something else became clear.

It's been a while since the pop/punk and post/pre-Richey comparisons have been made. Ironic considering how seemlessly the Manics slip between modes these days. Today theartsdesk brings you an exclusive preview of the live, power-popping video of "Hazleton Avenue", due for release next Monday to coincide with their live digital EP, Some Kind of Nothingness (available on iTunes).