Seeking to exorcise the failure of his current love affair, the poet Hoffmann tells the tales of his three past loves - the doll-like Olympia, the high-class courtesan Giulietta, and the ambitious but delicate Antonia - and recalls how each was thwarted by the evil influence of his rival. Jacques Offenbach's opera is performed at the Paris National Opera, directed by Robert Carsen, and the cast includes Neil Shicoff (as Hoffmann) and Bryn Terfel.

Staged and costumed by Laurent Pelly, with sets by Chantal Thomas and choreography by Laura Scozzi, this production of La Belle Hélène never forgets for one moment that Offenbach’s parody of the origins of the Trojan war -clearly recognisable in his day as a satire on the moral laxity of Second Empire high society- is, above all, a supreme manifestion of his comic genius. From start to finish it combines a musically superb performance with a stream of visual humour that flows from Pelly’s core idea that the action all takes place in the imagination of a sleeping, sex-starved, suburban housewife. Dame Felicity Lott is magnificent as the woman who gets into bed beside her somnolent old husband and dreams of being the most beautiful woman in the world, entangled in amorous adventures with the virile young Paris, tastily portrayed by Yann Beuron. And just as dreams do not respect the normal limitations of logic, time and place, so her nighttime fantasies combine the everyday with the mythical, and muddle up Greece, ancient and modern.