Whose Don Juan – progenitor Tirso de Molina’s, Molière’s or Pushkin’s? None of the above. Unless you have some knowledge of Ukrainian culture, you won’t have heard of Lesya Ukrainka, born Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka in 1871 to a proudly nationalist (if half-Byelorusian) father and a mother whose pioneering work in women’s rights she continued.

There are two operatic types who should leave Rossini’s epic swansong for the stage well alone. One would usually be a conductor who ignores many of the notes written by a master at the height of his powers, since even the least dramatic numbers have musical idiosyncrasy in them. Antonio Pappano still omits, among other things, Rossini’s superb Mozartian canon-trio for women's voices and wind ensemble; but what he does conduct is so focused and shapely that he must be forgiven.

From “Printemps qui Commence“ (spring is beginning) to “Springtime for Hitler"... that really is quite some intellectual leap. Patrick Mason, an experienced and respected opera director, has uprooted the tale of Saint-Saëns's opera from biblical Gaza, and has placed the first two acts in France somewhere around the time of Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion, with Warsaw ghetto overtones.

There are two fundamental ways to fillet the untranslatable poetry and ritual of Aeschylus, most remote of the three ancient Greek tragedians, for a contemporary audience. One is to find a poet of comparable word-magic and a composer to reflect the crucial role of music at the Athenian festivals, serving the drama with masks and compelling strangeness, as Peter Hall did in his seminal 1980s Oresteia at the National Theatre (poet: Tony Harrison, composer: Harrison Birtwistle, peerless both).

Imagine if broadcasters thought the only living pop star worth giving air time to was Lady Gaga. Imagine – the horror. It would be wall-to-wall Gaga for the foreseeable future. And then imagine if the only living contemporary artist commissioning editors at Channel 4 and the BBC even bothered looking at was… Grayson Perry. Imagine. 

With The Jesus & Mary Chain reformed and currently touring their epochal debut album, Psychocandy, theartsdesk reaches into its archives to offer up a rare and very extensive interview with lead singer Jim Reid from 2010.

It’s quite a distance from the first performance of Monteverdi’s operatic cornucopia under the Mantuan Gonzagas’ imperious eye to this democratic celebration at the Roundhouse – 408 years, to be precise. Michael Boyd’s production takes us back even further, to those ancient Greek festivals of poetry and music which inspired the intellectual Florentines to fashion the art of opera in the late 16^th century.

Given Hercules stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and is directed by Brett Ratner, the man behind the Rush Hour films, currently signed on to helm Beverley Hills Cop IV, few would expect anything but a mindless multiplex romp. And that’s exactly what they get although it’s a shame brains must be so completely switched off since much more fun could have been had with this, especially given a strong supporting cast that includes John Hurt, Peter Mullan and Joseph Fiennes.

God-sent sea monsters and divinely ordained human sacrifices don’t wash well with opera updated. The favoured contemporary take on the post-Trojan War myth of Mozart’s Idomeneo, which may even have originated in the last Covent Garden production 25 years ago by a fitfully brilliant Johannes Schaaf, has been to put a populace at risk from natural disaster and pestilence. Clearly the programme was expecting something of the sort, with its images of Hurricane Katrina. But no, for director Martin Kušej, the only monster is the state.

Like Ibsen’s titanic character in search of a self, the Barbican’s theatre programme globetrots to find the richest and rarest. Yet it certainly doesn’t reach Peer Gynt's conclusion that home's best. In this case London’s finest and, for most of the year, only showcase for the most innovative of world theatre looked as if it might be hoist with its own international petard: I doubt I’ll ever see a production of Ibsen’s epic masterpiece as shatteringly great as Baltasur Kormakur's pared-down vision for the National Theatre of Iceland in the Pit back in 2007.