Laurence Dale

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.

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.

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.

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.