The opera singer Elizabeth Connell enjoyed 10 successful years as a mezzo before becoming a soprano and enjoying over two decades more of international acclaim.

There is hell-fire enough at the close of Francesca Zambello’s 2002 staging of Don Giovanni to consume not just the Don but the entire production.

It might seem a fool's errand to attempt to encapsulate the musical developments of the 18th century in a single package, given the era's heavyweight talents include Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn.

The Canadian bass Don Garrard sang in the UK for over 20 years, with the Royal Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, and above all with Sadler's Wells, now English National Opera. He had a natural authority, both of voice and bearing, that served him well in roles such as Sarastro in The Magic Flute, Prince Gremin in Tchaikowsky's Eugene Onegin and the Grand Inquisitor in Verdi's Don Carlos. The warmth of his voice and personality also allowed him to play loving fathers with equal facility; among these Daland in Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and Arkel in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande are good examples. His singing was also much appreciated in Canada and the US.

Jonathan Miller’s triumphant staging of Donizetti’s comic masterpiece 'The Elixir of Love' returns to the London Coliseum this September for a limited run of only nine performances, while Fiona Shaw brings her unique creative flair to a major new production of Mozart’s immensely popular classic 'The Marriage of Figaro' in October.

Fired by the Olivier-winning success of their miniature ‘Boheme’ last year, OperaUpClose have become fizzingly prolific. After three pocket productions at the Kings Head, they have now moved back to the slightly more spacious Soho Theatre with ‘Mozart’s Don Giovanni’, whose title reflects the fact that other cooks besides Wolfgang had a hand in its creation.

Her appearances in this country are rare enough as it is so to discover that Maria Joao Pires was to be a late substitute (for the indisposed Murray Perahia) was precious consolation indeed.

Jonathan Kent sees the prime challenge of ‘Don Giovanni’ as being to find a way to ‘give its hero a life’, since his mix of charm and demonic psychopathy is entirely unexplained: he wants it to be clear that this is the first time the Don has killed, and that it’s murder rather than libertinage which sends him to hell. Kent’s thesis worked well when the show was unveiled last year, thanks to Gerald Finley’s charisma in the role, but the production was in some ways problematic.

Further to the obituary of Malcolm Smith (11 March), during the interval of Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland's 2006 performance in Cadogan Hall, I found a morose, pessimistic Malcolm reflecting blackly on the decayed state of the London musical world as he knew it, writes Robert Maycock. Not a hint of optimism from anybody listening went unchallenged.

The connection between Verdi’s Overture to Luisa Miller and Mozart’s G major Piano Concerto No.17 may not immediately have been apparent but a few pages of both quickly pointed up operatic common ground. The curtain was duly raised on two very distinct and vivid dramas.