***** The Telegraph
’one of the best-staged productions in the history of this Irish festival’
’This magnificent soaring Vanessa deserves a wider audience’

***** The Times
’pitch-perfect production… in Cordelia Chisholm’s superb designs’

**** Bachtrack
’Utterly gripping performance of Barber's Vanessa’
’The sets and costume design by Cordelia Chisholm were both tremendously stylish and sumptuous.’

**** The Stage
’Beautifully realised production’

**** The Irish Times

The Sunday Times
’Samuel Barber’s Vanessa was performed at such a high level that its neglect in Europe, and particularly the UK, seemed baffling…the triumph is thanks to Rodula Gaitanou’s immaculate staging in handsome sets and 1950s costumes by Cordelia Chisholm, which gave the opera a special, near-masterpiece atmosphere.’

The Spectator
’Faded into creams and greys – interiors with all the muted elegance of a Hammershoi painting, and something of that emotional charge, that air of expectancy — Cordelia Chisholm’s exquisite set places us postwar, possibly in East Coast America, possibly the anonymous ‘northern country’ of the original. Into this promising frame Rodula Gaitanou pours a production of dextrous subtlety that lives in the understated detail of its human observation.’