Rusalka/La tragédie de Carmen

Romantic opera for the credit crunch era as English Touring Opera bring two pared down works to the stage

Friendship and opera

Two grand old men of letters, Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney, on friendship and a joint opera - The Burial at Thebes

Partenope at London Coliseum

Christopher Alden hits on ingenious solutions in his witty new English National Opera production of Handel’s 1730 comedy

Pick of the week: Scottish Opera - The Secret Marriage

Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tue and Sat; The Two Widows, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri

Jose Carreras's battle with leukaemia

The tenor talks about life, love and his amazing recovery after being given a 1 in 10 chance of survival

Tosca

If Christopher Alden plays fast and loose with specifics, he is truthful to what matters in this gruesomely sadistic opera

Cavalleria and Pagliacci - the Sunday Times review

ENO’s inventive Cav & Pag, which opened English National Opera's 2008-09 season, hint at good things to come

Andrea Bocelli: The tenor's commandments

Andrea Bocelli discusses sex, splashing out on speed boats and materialism. But he refuses to talk about his blindness

La Calisto

Decadent, debauched and divinely depraved, David Alden’s production is everything one had expected, and then some

Cavalleria Rusticana/I Pagliacci

In both atmosphere and impact, Richard Jones's two conceptions could hardly have been more at variance

Otello

Dennis O'Neill and Amanda Roocrfot star in an Otello that, while plain in design, excels in glorious music

La fanciulla del West

This staging was once refurbished with some dodgy casting and slightly overegged conducting, now both have been rectified

Edward Gardner keeps it real at the ENO

Less-is-more approach is financial and artistic necessity for ENO, says music director, Edward Gardner

Richard Jones on Cav & Pag

I Pagliacci à la Tommy Cooper; it could only be the rather quirky 55-year-old Jones directing, says Emma Pomfret

Eva-Maria Westbroek: from waitress to the ROH

How did a former singing waitress make it to Covent Garden for La fanciulla del West? Neil Fisher meets Eva-Maria Westbroek

Don Giovanni

Readers of The Sun saw Simon Keenlyside fail to muster either the vocal weight or enough spirit to convince as Giovanni

Flight/La Rondine

Dove's Flight takes off, but Puccini's La Rondine crashes in British Youth Opera's latest ventures

The Tales of Hoffmann

A big ask for Mid Wales Opera, however it is performed with conviction, conducted with panache and definitely worth a visit

Carmen

A lustily sung, bone-shakingly amplified Carmen, jam-packed with spectacle but blissfully free of any convoluted 'subtext'

Gergiev's greatest hits

The Russian conductor wasn’t resting on his laurels at Edinburgh, as a string of fine performances proved, says Paul Driver