English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire

Power, heroism, separation, lovers reunited ... English Touring Opera's autumn season at Hackney Empire has all the elements of human life – and of interfering gods as well.

Handel's Xerxes (8 Oct) updates the myth to make its hero a Battle of Britain pilot-prince. Handel's once forgotten operas, with their showstopping arias and characterful orchestration are now favourites with opera companies large and small – and audiences too – and Xerxes is particularly fine.

In Cavalli's La Calisto (14 Oct), delicious musical collisions arise out of Jupiter's abduction of Calisto and Diana's romp with Endymion. Then Penelope is reunited with her warrior husband in Ulysses' Homecoming (15 Oct), by Monteverdi.

English Touring Opera has a deserved reputation for making unfamiliar works accessible, and for giving a fresh new look to the mainstays of the repertoire – and this innovative companies fits the atmospheric Hackney Empire like a glove.