Live reviews

I see from Opera Magazine that the Royal Opera are planning (for 2013) a new Les Vepres siciliennes with Marina Poplavskaya as Helene and Erwin Schrott as Procida, directed by Stefan Herheim and conducted by Antonio Pappano. I hope, from the title, that they will be doing it in French rather than Italian. Also in 2013, Deborah Warner's production of Messiah makes a return (not sure whether to say Welcome or not) to the Coliseum. Still in 2013, David Parry will conduct the first British production of Rossini's Maometto II at Garsington, should be something to look forward too.

Also next year San Francisco opera will be premiering Tobias Picker's new opera, Dolores Clairborne.

I see that Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus will make its way to the Holland Festival and to Bregenz in summer 2014; sounds like a very good reason to travel to the Netherlands that year.

A new production (thank goodness) of Lucia di Lammermoor is planned at Covent Garden for 2015/16 with Diana Damrau (hurrah!).

In his review of the Tales of Hoffmann Rodney Milnes makes some pertinent points about the way we tend to ignore the opéra comique origins of so many operas (Hoffmann, Faust, Mignon) and that these pieces seem to work better as opéra comique, and stand in danger of seeming overblown when done with recitative. Quite.