...in Olivia Fuchs’s austere production for Opera Holland Park‚ the agony of Lucia’s lover‚ Edgardo‚ is as poignant as that of the bloodstained bride...an elegant and understated staging

In truth‚ the threatening elements provided a rather fitting backdrop for Sir Walter Scott’s dark tale of bloody patriarchal oppression. Olivia Fuchs’s production‚ with Jamie Vartan’s economical designs‚ neatly points up the insidious social forces that conspire to rob Lucia of her happiness and sanity.

Olivia Fuchs’s smart‚ simple staging...the action moved swiftly‚ one scene moving effortlessly into the next...

Informal and affordable Opera Holland Park opens its festive summer event with Olivia Fuchs’s new production of Donizetti’s double tragedy. It’s among her best work‚ incisive as narrative‚ perceptive in characterisation... a thrilling evening.

On a perfect summer evening‚ Opera Holland Park hit the ground running with a distinguished production of Verdi’s Macbeth by that venturesome director Olivia Fuchs.

Fuchs’s handling of the witches — often sent up by serious directors embarrassed by Verdi’s jaunty‚ rollicking choruses — is one of the most striking aspects of her staging. They infiltrate Macbeth’s illicit court and celebrate Malcolm’s restoration by reconvening their coven to foment more mischief. Fuchs proposes a Macbeth that glories in the anarchic‚ disturbing power these women represent‚ and the female chorus rises magnificently to the occasion.

Don Giovanni‚ that late 18th-century expression of female oppression and male come-uppance‚ is an opera that might have been made for a 21st-century revisionist director. Olivia Fuchs has made full use of the opportunity in her production for Opera North. Her trick is that she has encouraged us to view the work as if the Don had been raping his victims only yesterday. We are no longer distanced from the horror of what he does.