In a Spanish prison, Carmen declares that any person she loves should beware. But even she is unprepared for what will happen when she decides to seduce Don José, a prison guard who initially appears uninterested in her charms. Don José soon abandons his sweetheart Micaëla and his life for Carmen, and joins her and her smuggler friends in the mountains

Hänsel and Gretel are very, VERY hungry. When their mother sends them out into the forest one evening to collect berries for tea, they don’t notice the night closing in around them, and they lose their way. With the help of the Sandman and Dew Fairy, the children manage to sleep. In the morning they try to find the path again... when suddenly they stumble across a house made of gingerbread, sweets and every type of cake imaginable. Heaven for hungry tummies!! But this is a witch’s house, and she doesn’t let children eat her house for free...

A comic tale of small town life, where the attitudes and relationships of the local dignitaries, both obvious and concealed, lead the hapless Albert Herring to his unwanted prominent role of May King in the community.

This classic pantomime story is by French-born mezzo-soprano, composer and pedagogue Pauline Viardot (1821-1910)… an exceptional female musical talent. It will be semi-staged as a concert operetta with plenty of scope for additional seasonal entertainment and, most certainly, audience participation.

Originally inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Giacomo Puccini composed Gianni Schicchi as the third and final part of Il Trittico which was premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918. SPO’s contemporary-set production sees the extended wealthy Donati family feigning grief over the patriarch, Buoso’s recent death but are more concerned for their own interests being reflected in the will.

The Marriage of Figaro was first performed in 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna, and is rightly celebrated as the first of three comic, or ‘buffa’, operas in Italian that brought together two highly skilled craftsmen, the librettist Da Ponte (1749-1838) and the composer Mozart (1756-91) – the other works being Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). All three addressed love and deception with an irony that is as sharp today as it was then.

Cosi fan tutte (1790) was the third and final collaboration between librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the one with the least straightforward history. Like Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and (Il) Don Giovanni (1787) it was a comic opera whose tone was wryly witty in both words and music.

Theatre is at its best when it is challenging the establishment, and Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld does just that. The Greek gods, bored with Ambrosia, take a raucous trip to the underworld to sort out a couple’s marital problems.

Worldwide there are almost 500 productions of The Magic Flute every year. So, first of all, thank you for coming to see this one! The two fundamental questions any director must ask before taking on a show are, ‘why this?’ and ‘why now?’— as an audience member, you may be asking the same questions.

Mozart’s Don Giovanni is such a cultural landmark that it is easy to forget that it emerged from a sea of frenetic compositional activity in a Viennese landscape already crowded with Italian opera, including other versions of the same story.