Beatrice and Benedict

Through the eye of French director Laurent Pelly this expression of Berlioz's undying admiration for the Bard - his adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing as an opera comique - becomes 'an elegant treatise on love and music designed in shades of grey with 50's-era costumes' (Sunday Express). Housed by designer Barbara de Limburg in a series of oversized boxes, it's 'terribly chic, terribly pretty' (The Spectator). Soaring over the 'warmly graceful playing of the London Philharmonic', Paul Appleby sings 'attractively' as Benedict and Stephanie d'Oustrac 'makes a marvellously wiry and fiery Beatrice, singing with charm and acting with gusto' (The Telegraph).