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Jay Scheib spices up the visual experience with digital content in his production of Parsifal. Sounds good. But is it?

An epic night at the opera with Joyce DiDonato, which will be hard to forget.

The contestants value the top-class Concours musical international de Montréal for its personal atmosphere.

High intensity girl power for a complex task: Simone Young shines in the pit, Karoline Gruber’s staging convinces with expertise and attention to detail.

Hoffmann goes Steampunk: Renaud Doucet’s staging for the Volksoper is the exception to the sensible rule that “less is more”.

A night in the cheerful undemanding: lovers of Strauss, Venice and period costumed slapstick will get their money’s worth. Oh how lovely to behold are not only the charming women in this operetta, but also Hinrich Horstkotte's costumes.

Emmerich Kálmán’s Gräfin Mariza is celebrating her 90th birthday this year, but just like my slightly younger great-aunts, who introduced me to this operetta at the tender age of five, she is far from ready for a care home. Thomas Enzinger and set/costume designer Toto have come up with another imaginative response to the question of why and how the bygone genre of operetta should be produced today.

Out of the swamp: Marcel Beekman rocks the house in Robert Carsen’s glittering take on Platée.

This L’elisir d’amore at the Vienna Staatsoper, with Lawrence Brownlee and Mario Cassi, saw a successful two-performance test-run before its return in March, again under the baton of Guillermo García Calvo.

An excellent cast headed by Franco Fagioli makes this concert version of Rinaldo at the Theater an der Wien unforgettable; Il Pomo d'Oro shine in the pit.

Since 2013 marks a Verdi anniversary, the Viennese have been treated to two new productions of Il trovatore: Philipp Stölzl’s pacey, offbeat deconstruction that will open in Berlin next week, and this Volksoper co-production with the Theater Bonn where the curtain goes down after every scene.

Vienna is a nostalgic town, and in few places is the past clung onto more tightly than at the State Opera, where a Tosca created for Renata Tebaldi has been pressed creakingly into service for over 55 years now.

Think of all the adjectives typically used to report on the best of female Wagner singing; add lyrical phrasing and imagine the absence of any shrillness, and you have come as close as possible to a description of the perfection that Nina Stemme achieved in her first Isolde for the Wiener Staatsoper.

You may not know too much about Berlin operetta, but even when you’re not a native German, chances are high that you know Berlin’s unofficial anthem “Berliner Luft”, or “Berlin Air”. Chances are that you can also sing and dance along to waltzes and non-military marches whose choruses go “Luft, Luft, Luft” or “mop, mop, mop”.

Il Trovatore has doggedly survived in opera’s hit charts despite dispensing generous quantities of hair-raising as well as eyebrow-raising content. Verdi’s music is intoxicating, of course, but there is something to this work that makes it accessible beyond reasoning.

Wagnerians who are unfamiliar with the subtle humour of German humourist Loriot might sneer at the mere thought of paying to hear a version of the tetralogy that is cut by about 80% of the total score, but this was not the case with the regular Viennese Ring-goers who filled this performance. And judging from the applause, it was a worthwhile experience for them as well as for Wagner rookies.

Love and death are the two basic ingredients of the standard opera plot, and the more tragedy involved from the first to the last, the more likely it is to spur composers to set it to magnificent music. Andrea Chénier is a textbook example of this although it is not anywhere near as popular as La traviata, Carmen or La bohème, and explicably so.

Under the headline “Why Lortzing?”, the evening’s programme lists 20 reasons by Lortzing biographer Jürgen Lodemann why this composer should not be forgotten, including the fact that Lortzing’s operas were the most-performed in Germany for about 150 years.

Goethe’s epistolary novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”) hit the 1774 zeitgeist not only because it brought back emotion to the rather sober Age of Enlightenment, but because the tragic title hero sports a multi-faceted character that lends itself to various interpretations and projections, therefore making it easy to feel sympathy or even partly identify with the

Béatrice et Bénédict is Hector Berlioz’s last work; he wrote it between 1860 and 1862 for the theatre that patron Edouard Bénazet had built in Baden-Baden, then Germany’s most chic health resort.

With the business situation in the recording industry being what it is, studio recordings of operas are more or less ruled out. The positive side of this is that the general public gets the chance to be part of concerts that are recorded and enjoy the tension such an event creates more often.

Those who attended Jonas Kaufmann’s Vienna Wagner debut and were wondering why his Parsifal was beautiful but rather underwhelming in volume, were given the answer on the stage of the Konzerthaus two days later, when he announced himself as “still ill after a severe cold”.

Die Csárdásfürstin is set at the beginning of World War I, a time of uncertainty and fear, but also one where the ruling classes of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy were partying like there was no tomorrow.

The Theater an der Wien has a storied history with Fidelio, having hosted the première of the work’s first and second versions in 1805 and 1806 respectively.

Smetana wrote Prodaná nevěsta (“The Bartered Bride”) as a light Czech folk piece in a playful reply to critics who said that his music was too Wagnerian, or too German for that matter – something not compatible with the growing Czech national consciousness in the period he composed it (1863–66), even though he only showed mild interest in the Czech cause.

In times where musical luxury is sometimes associated with having a pop star perform a short “Happy Birthday” and a handful of songs in a private performance – and for a usually undisclosed (and indecent) fee, having a whole piece of music composed for an occasion, or organising a private performance by a famous orchestra, is almost unimaginable.

When Jean-Christophe Spinosi stepped onto the podium to conduct Le Comte Ory that night, he didn’t wait for his applause to cease, but instantly cued a hearty forte from the Ensemble Matheus, and consequently a few incredulous looks from the audience.

What has made Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti’s take on Cinderella survive on the opera stage for almost 200 years now is not only the universal archetype of the downtrodden girl who is redeemed by Prince Charming, nor its enchanting music: the absence of fairy-tale symbols like the pumpkin carriage and the glass shoe (barefoot ladies would have been too outrageous a sight on an Italian

When the Theater an der Wien’s in-house magazine featured an article about costumes created by none other than Christian Lacroix for this new production of Radamisto, I was intrigued by the pictures, but also a bit nonplussed by the idea that his gowns had been hand-painted in order to illustrate the different levels of Radamisto’s nightmare.

The message of Voltaire’s novel Candide, ou l’Optimisme is that rationality and reason, rather than custom, faith or authoritative orders should determine all human activity, and although this quintessence of the Age of Enlightenment sounds self-evident nowadays, a visit to the newspaper kiosk shows us otherwise: a lot of luridly-titled guidebooks and magazines try to talk us into believing that a

In a city where the Vienna State Opera ball is considered the climax of the carnival season and where the local news would lend itself to great libretti (were operetta still in fashion), it is not too surprising that music and theatre performances occasionally mirror the headlines.

Along with Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron, Wiener Blut is generally considered to be Johann Strauss’s most popular operetta, although it is really a pasticcio for which Adolf Müller recycled parts of 31 popular dance pieces, artistically weaving various motifs into a new score.

A new production of Ariadne auf Naxos is a major draw in itself, but a queue for standing room whose end is on the other side of the opera house is news even in Vienna, especially when the performance is not the première, but the fourth in a run of five and also the one that Franz Welser-Möst left to Jeffrey Tate, who has conducted the piece to positive reviews before.

Humperdinck called his greatest hit a “Kinderstubenweihfestspiel” (a festival play for the consecration of the nursery) and the course of time has proven this joke appropriate: while Parsifal around Easter is the high point of the year for Wagnerians, Hänsel und Gretel at Christmastime is for everybody (including all those who claim they can’t stand Wagner and ignore the influence he had on Humpe

A cast of five countertenors and one tenor performing an opera by Handel contemporary Leonardo Vinci may look like a long evening to those who don’t appreciate the high male voice, but Baroque lovers hoping for a triplet and trill fest as well as some vocal drag got all they wanted in this concert version of Artaserse.

Alceste is the short and sombre story of a wife who gives her life to save that of her husband, King Admète of Thessaly, a deed which ultimately convinces the gods to reprieve both of them. Gluck, hoping to avoid the over-decorated vocal style then in vogue, set this plot to unadorned vocal lines to give depth to the underlying emotions.

It was a touching moment when an overwhelmed Joyce DiDonato re-entered the stage after her fourth encore and covered her face with her hands for a few moments, not sure what to do in response to the unceasing applause.

After twelve long years, Oscar Straus’ Ein Walzertraum has made it back to the Volksoper, the place where it belongs for its indestructible Viennese spirit and never-ending popularity, and where Robert Meyer, the house’s boss and director on this occasion, customarily ensures that the traditional operetta is sheltered from modernist conceptual stagings.

A father having marriage plans for his daughter of which the latter does not approve may not be the most original plot, but it has inspired operas throughout the centuries, with well-known examples being The Bartered Bride and Arabella.

Rollando Villazón, Kate Lindsey und Sir Simon Keenlyside machen die aktuelle Aufführungsserie dieser exotischeren Blumen im Opernrepertoire zum Pflichttermin.

Ausgerechnet am 200. Geburtstag von Johann Strauß, bleibt seine Operette ein belangloser Verkleidungs- und Verwechslungsklamauk.

Christian Thielemann und Piotr Beczała begeistern mit *Lohengrin* bei den Bayreuther Festspielen.

Anna Netrebko singt ihr Rollendebüt als Lisa – wie so oft – auf allerhöchstem Niveau.

Philippe Jordan und das Staatsopernorchester liefern den perfekten Klangteppich für die Schagerparade.

Lotte de Beers Inszenierung ist am Ende des Abends billiger Klamauk, schrammt aber – wenn auch knapp – an einer Katastrophe vorbei.

Die russische Sopranistin Lidia Fridman führt mit ihrem Charisma einen stimmigen Abend an. Auch aus dem Orchestergraben strömt dramatisches Belcanto.

Der französische Tenor bringt mit seiner uneitlen Art und Weise in Charles Gounods Oper das Wiener Publikum zum Schmelzen.

Christian Thielamnn und Klaus Florian Vogt als Lohengrin sind einmal mehr eine Klasse für sich.

Die Strauss-Fans jubeln, und das ist gut so: Christian Thielemann und Michael Volle sorgen für einen fast schon zu perfekten Strauss-Abend.

So viel wird selten geküsst! Michael Fabiano, Sonya Yoncheva und George Petean singen einen umwerfenden Andrea Chénier.