Jakub Józef Orliński

Thrust into the limelight as a teenage star and a concert companion of Luciano Pavarotti, Carmela Remigio has matured into a thoughtful artist who knows her own mind and is nurturing her career for the long term. Simon Mundy met the Italian soprano at this year’s Valle d’Itria Festival

At just 27 years old, charismatic Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński already has the opera world at his feet thanks to a voice driven by its clean, intense energy. Francis Muzzu talks music with him, from Baroque to breakdance, with a nod to The King’s Singers, who encouraged him to keep his voice high and pure.

Autumn in the historic town of Ravenna offers a concentrated burst of opera, in a festival that offers a platform for showing off the best local talent as well as attracting outstanding young musicians from all over the world whose careers are being transformed by the ‘Muti effect’

A new exhibition in the German city of Nuremberg examines the role of opera as a powerful tool in the Nazi’s propaganda machine. Benjamin Ivry introduces the themes in the exhibition and considers how opera in modern Germany is helping to redress the sins of the past

Kazushi Ono has honed his considerable skills as a conductor in the world’s greatest opera houses. He now brings his operatic expertise to bear in his homeland as he takes up his new role as artistic director of the New National Theatre Tokyo. Yukiko Kishinami finds out more about Ono’s ambitious plans for opera in Japan

The Academy of Ancient Music’s three-year Purcell opera cycle at the Barbican Centre reaches its finale this month, with a ‘concert staging’ of Dido and Aeneas. Thomas Guthrie, who directs the performance, discusses how semi-staged opera is able to fire the imagination of audiences in a way that transcends more elaborate productions

Festival focus

Anton Rubinstein’s opera, Demon (premiered in 1875) is finally being heard and appreciated after years of neglect, having been considered ‘too traditional’ by most of his contemporaries. Four European theatres have staged different productions of the work in recent years. Bard’s production marked a very rare appearance in the US

Festival focus

Vanessa has received a run of warmly received productions in recent years, including a successful outing at Wexford in 2016. This summer, Glyndebourne added its endorsement with what was – 60 years after its launch – the opera’s first full-scale professional staging in Britain

Thanks to its gigantic forces –with some 65 named roles and a vast chorus in keeping with its epic novel forerunner – Prokofiev’s War and Peace is rarely staged. David Pountney’s insightful new English language production for WNO is based on Katya Ermolaeva and Rita McAllister’s recent critical edition of Prokofiev’s original score

English National Opera’s American artistic director, Daniel Kramer, launched his regime proper by programming Paul Bunyan, Britten’s first stage work – an assemblage of Americana that failed to woo US audiences at its premiere, but absolutely deserves to be in ENO’s rep (if it ever has one again)