It’s more than a decade since Opera North had a new production of The Marriage of Figaro, and 30 years since the one before that had its premiere, so it’s certainly time for a fresh look at it. And bringing the story into the present day (or something near it), and locating it in an English country house (or something like one) was no doubt too good an idea to ignore. It’s not Downton Abbey, as American director Louisa Muller sees it – rather something a bit lower down the financial scale – but still a place where the old-fashioned ways have some clout left in them.

In 2016, when Richard Jones's production of Musorgsky's original 1869 Boris Godunov first amazed us, Putin had invaded Crimea but not the rest of Ukraine, and tens of thousands protested election results in August. A decade on, totalitarian Russia is almost a closed book to us and it had begun to feel as if Musorgsky, and the Pushkin history play on which he based his two versions, had nothing more to forecast about Russian times of change.

Early 2026 was always going to trump late 2025 in one respect: total clarity in a much-anticipated concert performance of Janáček's teeming masterpiece over Katie Mitchell's disastrously overloaded Royal Opera production. And it resplendently did, with Marlis Petersen free to capture every facet of the 337-year-old heroine seeking regeneration, only to decide that life beyond the normal human span isn't worth the candle.

It was a year for outstanding individual performances, especially from relative newcomers, and at least three flawless ensembles, less so for the Total Work of Art.

Fire and ice are the elements invoked at the start of Handel’s remarkable opera of jealousy and betrayal, yet what gives it its power is the world of subtlety and shadow that lies between them. In Jetske Mijnssen’s dynamic, darkly witty directorial debut at the Royal Opera House, she creates a canvas on which each character’s contradictions can be felt to the full, capturing every nuance of their rapturous highs and sonorous lows. 

From the team who gave us a sparkly L’étoile just a year ago, comes a fun-filled production of

That spirit of delight which hovered over Christopher Alden’s stylish/surreal Handel bagatelle when I first saw it in the 2017 revival soars on eagle wings here. It’s hard to imagine a better or more charismatic cast, led by national treasures Nardus Williams and Hugh Cutting, or a more striking contrast to Dead Man Walking: with that and its slyly subversive Albert Herring, ENO is on a roll.

At least two facts stare us unflinchingly in the face here. For all the programme’s harping on how “everyone has their own view about the death penalty,” I don’t think there was any doubt in the audience’s mind about the horror of its Old Testament vengeance. And I also doubt if anyone was ultimately left unmoved or stunned by the hard-hitting performances of a perfect cast. This is music-theatre at its riveting best.

Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad end”. In which case, the even stranger Makropulos Case is a chattery legal mystery with a transcendent end as the 337-year-old (437 in this update) protagonist decides life only has meaning within its natural span and rejects the formula she's come for.

Emotional truth backed up by musical sophistication is what saves Puccini’s drama about a geisha deserted by an American officer from mawkishness. Director Daisy Evans has a very good idea for getting at its palpitating heart in a production of stunning visual beauty; Celine Byrne in the title role gives us vocal opulence but not nearly enough identification with a woman whose total, misplaced love leads to painful hope and desperate tragedy.