A variety of hits and misses have been thrown up by the arts world this week, and a small selection can be seen below, from opera and classical music to visual arts.

Away from the big London galleries, the exhibition 'Stanley Spencer and the English Garden' was visited by Fisun Guner at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. Spencer found an earthly paradise in his beloved village of Cookham, as the show focuses on his love of the English garden. After the horrors of World War I, Spencer found a haven of peace and tranquillity there, although his garden paintings are some of his lesser known works. The pictures depict both a nature that is heady, intoxicating and abundant, that can barely be contained by man, as well as nature that is tamed by man's cultivation.

The Arcola Theatre in east London was the location, as Igor Toronyi-Lalic avoided the grand opera houses this week for a rare staging of Viktor Ullmann's only opera, 'The Emperor of Atlantis'. Owing to his tragic death at Auschwitz though, Toronyi-Lalic believes that Ullmann has been bestowed with a greater reputation than he deserves. The overly fussy staging by director Max Hoehn ruined the production, while Peter Kien's libretto and its strange, haunting story resonant with fear and nostalgia, was not strong enough to rescue the production.

A matinee classical concert of works by the inseparable pair of Modernists Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle was seen by Geoff Brown at Cadogan Hall for the BBC Proms. A fiery, dramatic, almost operatic cantata about Jacob wrestling with the angel was evident in Birtwistle's 'Angel Fighter'.

Davies's unaccompanied motet 'Il rozzo martello', on the other hand, was an intellectual piece, contemplative and emotionally remote. Well sung by the BBC Singers under David Atherton, it still did not feel like an urgent, vital work. A bit of light relief came in the world premier of Georges Aperghis's 'Champ-Contrechamp', played by pianist Nicolas Hodges, conspicuously in full evening dress.