Laurence Dale

Academy Award winner Istvan Szabo brings to the screen Offenbach's operettas set against the backdrop of power and intrigue in 19th century Paris. Offenbach's Secret follows the staging of Croquefer and Les deux Aveugles at the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens founded by Offenbach in 1855. Limited by French law to one act with no more than three singers, Offenbach's early operettas were filled with biting social commentary and poked fun at the moral ambiguity of France's Second Empire under Napoleon III. In addition to Offenbach's vivacious music, the film features lush costumes, period details, and striking set designs.

German director Werner Schroeter invited his favourite opera singers to a 13th century abbey near Paris. There was no pre-planned action. There was no script, no continuity. On the other hand, there were precise constraints that provided the rules of the game: the setting, the Abbey of Royaumont, and the chosen participants. Each singer came accompanied by a person of his or her choice, and worked on an aria chosen by the director.

Princess Ida and Prince Hilarion were betrothed when the Prince was two years old and the Princess just one year old. Twenty years have now passed, and the time has come for Hilarion to claim his bride. The Princess, however, has other ideas. She has set up a women's-only University - and men are not allowed. Hilarion and his friends, Cyril and Florian, disguise themselves as women to gain entrance to the University. All goes well until Cyril's unmaidenly conduct compromises their disguise - and reveals the three friends as intruding men.

Based, in part, on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi's last work for the stage - and only his second comic opera. And yet the humour in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito.

Peter Brooks' adaptation of Carmen by Mérimée and Bizet.

La Cenerentola is Gioachino Rossini's version of the popular Cinderella story, an exciting mixture of comedy, pathos, coloratura fireworks and masquerade. This Glyndebourne production by John Cox captures perfectly the fairy-tale spirit of the piece, matched by Allen Charles Klein's imaginative scenery, distorted like three-dimensional cut-outs in an old-fashioned story book.