Quite how or why Berlioz's exquisite L'Enfance du Christ came to launch a series entitled "Choral Blockbusters" is anyone's guess, but Sir Colin Davis and his worshipful company of performers made it as mystical an experience as we have any right to expect, and there was definitely something in the air.

It is La traviata meets Die Fledermaus. Traviata without the fatality; Fledermaus without the frivolity. Puccini's La rondine (The Swallow) can never quite bring itself to be operetta (despite the Viennese source of its commission) but nor can it quite surrender to tragedy. There's a sense in which audiences have never quite known where they were with it. Until, that is, EMI cemented the real-life romance of opera's golden couple - Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu - and walked off with just about every award the recording industry had to offer. That was in 1998, and neither the opera, nor the singers, nor the conductor Antonio Pappano have ever looked back. This 2002 staging was the fruit of their collective success.