Aigul Akhmetshina [Paola Kudacki]

ANOTHER Carmen? Do I hear suppressed yawns? Probably the most performed piece in the opera canon, Bizet’s deathless score is back again at Covent Garden, running April 9-26 in the contemporised Damiano Michieletto staging that disappointed when it premiered a year ago – largely because its jeans & T-shirt evocations of sweaty, small-town Spanish life provided neither touristic spectacle nor compensating depth.

So why go this time round? Because it stars the most electrifying Carmen in the world right now, the Tartar mezzo Aigul Akmetshina. Not yet 30, she’s a star who burns with energy onstage: you can’t take your eyes or ears away from her. And she’s the current go-to for the role, performing it so often you’d expect fatigue to set in.

As she told me recently: “I do find it draining emotionally, getting killed night after night in so many different ways. But I’m never satisfied with how I play her: if I was, I’d stop because the challenge would go. All I can say is I play her through my own life experience.”

Which suggests that Akmetshina’s life experience must be roller-coaster – and no doubt it was once, growing up in a raw, remote part of the Russian Federation where she idolised Amy Winehouse and did stilt-walking in cabaret. Not a standard background for an opera diva, but it somehow feeds into the verve of her latterday stage career. rbo.org.uk

• Another young superstar in London this week is the Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, whose last appearance at Wigmore Hall was sensational and the hottest of tickets. Anticipating the same again, the Wigmore has booked him for two performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, April 7 & 8. And though there will be another run on the box-office, it’s worth trying – because Lim is special, and there’s every possibility that his Goldbergs will one day rank in history alongside those of Glenn Gould. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• As it happens, the Wigmore is on a roll at the moment, celebrating its 125th anniversary with a declaration of independence from the politicised blundering of the Arts Council (which is to say, it’s renouncing its grant) and running programmes at a level of excellence that venues like the Southbank have lost the ability to do. Also this week, April 4, it hosts pianist Igor Levit playing Prokofiev and Shostakovich. On April 7 there’s violinist Viktoria Mullova playing Beethoven. And in between, April 5 & 6, are the finals of the Hall’s own International String Quartet Competition. You won’t find weeks like that at the Southbank any more: the energy has passed. Full details: wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Thankfully there’s energy in Hampstead Garden Opera, the admirable training company for young singers which has a new production of La Cenerentola (Rossini’s adaptation of the Cinderella story) running at Jackson’s Lane Theatre, Highgate, April 4-13. Rossini dispensed with fairy godmothers and pumpkin coaches, so don’t expect that kind of magic. But HGO will doubtless compensate with magic of its own. hgo.org.uk

• Also in Highgate, the Fleet Singers have a come-and-sing day, Apr 6, St Anne’s Church N6, focused on Haydn’s Nelson Mass. An opportunity for amateur voices to get some air in their lungs. fleetsingers.org.uk