A pub in London's bustling Covent Garden has become the first in the capital to be named national pub of the year.

After the epic inanities of Mike Figgis’s cinematic take on ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ at the Coliseum - whose only saving grace was a trio of superb voices - it was sweet relief to encounter David McVicar’s ‘Magic Flute’ at Covent Garden. McVicar may have his own way of going over the top, but in this classic production, now in its third revival, he doesn’t put a foot wrong.

Ever since, as a small girl, she sang along with her opera-singer mother's warm-ups – shadowing her coloratura note-for-note in Queen of the Night – Aleksandra Kurzak has been up for challenges. She spent her childhood preparing to become a professional violinist – regarding singing as being too easy – but when Placido Domingo singled out this feisty young Pole in his Operalia festival, she decided to give singing a go instead.

It’s more than a century since Covent Garden last staged Francesco Cilea’s ‘Adriana Lecouvreur’, and the reason they’re doing it now – for astronomical seat prices – is glaringly obvious.

The passing of La Stupenda, Dame Joan Sutherland, cast a long dark shadow over the evening and maybe it was that which gave this revival of Verdi’s Rigoletto (Gilda was one of many roles she famously sang at Covent Garden) an added frisson of commitment and excitement.

Joan Sutherland's career was so solid and durable – and those are miserable words for a thing of such brilliance – that it might seem perverse to fix on one night of it. But 17 February 1959 was the date, and the occasion, a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the stuff that legends are made of. "Yes, yes," people say as if to wave away the subject, quieten the old opera-bore, soothe a child who tells of improbable adventures which you know the real world lacks resources to supply, But no: that night was one of the great events of a lifetime, and the voice of wonder is not so easily silenced.

It was one of the most controversial programmes in television history. When Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, was invited on to BBC 1's Question Time, it sparked massive protests. The programme, earlier this year, had extra edge because Mr Griffin was next to the black academic and playwright Bonnie Greer.

If you go down to the Royal Opera House, you're sure of a big surprise. Next weekend, Covent Garden will be transformed into a series of different forests as part of Ignite, the annual three-day contemporary arts festival. There's a shimmering Floating Forest, with real trees hanging from the beams, in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, while 200 discarded opera costumes from the ROH archives will create a surreal Faded Forest in the Conservatory, alongside mannequins and an Amazonian soundscape. The Linbury Studio will be transformed into a Reclaimed Forest of recycled telegraph poles and a reflecting pool by the opera designer Dick Bird. And in the entrance hall, the Anglo-French artist Alice Anderson has been commissioned to create a forest of tumbling auburn hair titled "Mother Web", which will remain in place for a year.