Alexandra Coghlan

Davidsen's once-in-a-generation soprano is a huge voice not yet entirely under control. But that sense of edgy power, of instinctive, sometimes explosive, force makes for a Leonore of fantasies.

British soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn returns to the company after far too long a gap in the title role. If Act I's Bel Canto Luisa is a bit of a squeeze for this generous voice, she comes into her own in the later acts, where soubrettish agility gives way to demanding, sustained vocal drama.

But if Britten’s score plays an elaborate game of tension and release, then David McVicar’s new staging is all release, albeit a tastefully calculated one.

Musically things are no less slick. DiDonato gives her finest performance in this house for years, crooning ‘Ogni vento’ into a bejewelled microphone with rock-star panache, before stripping things right back for Shakespearean monologue-in-music ‘Pensieri’.

This is as strong an outing as we've seen for this piece. Sacrificing tidiness for passion, Gardner and his cast give us Werther for the 13 Reasons Why generation: angry, hormonal and undeniably romantic.

Pido plays the straight man to Pelly's clown, offering gentle, discursive comedy and lightly rolling rhythms rather than anything more obviously knockabout. It's a decision that keeps things just the right side of indulgent - a crisp and colourful farce with an authentic French accent.

So does it live up to its promise? Yes and no, and neither in quite the ways you’d expect. Kim is the quietest, most unobtrusive of revelations.

Accompanied by stuttering chords from Ivor Bolton’s rather ragged orchestra, it’s a declaration that lacks conviction, coherence, and one ultimately cast adrift on Britten’s ‘infinite sea’.

Plus: Royal Opera's Berenice is the best night I've had at the theatre so far this year.

As ever with Herheim, it’s an interesting idea, meticulously researched and referenced, but unnecessarily overcomplicated. Despite Philipp Fürhofer’s handsome and often ingenious designs, it never quite pivots from thesis to drama.

Under Sebastian Weigle even the ravishing Overture is lumpy and under-phrased, and there’s altogether too much Wagner for comfort in the heavy-footed account that follows.

Barrie Kosky’s Carmen took a beating from critics when it premièred at the Royal Opera back in February (having previously been seen in Frankfurt). But it’s hard to see why.

Elijah Moshinsky’s classic production (first seen in 1991) sweeps grandly over any rough ground though, a gorgeous feast of colour and scope that matches the score for sheer sumptuousness.

Vocally both Stemme and Vinke romp home, he in the startling freshness of his final tale of childhood, she in an Immolation Scene of rapturous intensity.

More than 10 years on, the steampunk Edwardian setting – corsets, puffed sleeves and patriarchs meet futuristic onyx interiors and mad scientists – still looks handsome, and the sense of a world on the brink of change is no less keen.

Last seen over a decade ago, this Lady Macbeth may have returned with many of the same cast, meticulously revived by Elaine Kidd, but after the watershed of #MeToo its perspective seems altered.