Performer: Magdalena Anna Hofmann

Was besorgt man für den Komponisten, der alles geschaffen – und auch irgendwie kaputt gemacht – hat? Abgesehen von Arnold Schönbergs gut dokumentierter Phobie vor der Zahl 13, hätte er sich keine bessere Hommage zu seinem 150-jährigen Jubiläum wünschen können.

After Jonathan Meese's Parsifal staging was rejected by Bayreuth, he channelled his frustrations into an "arch-Parsifal" which shoots the titular hero into space, with a musical re-imagining of Wagner’s score by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang.

This was a concert made in heaven. To hear Per Nørgård's Iris, one of a triptych of symphonic poems composed in the late 1960s, eerie and mysterious, and underlain by the influences of Sibelius and Nørgård's teacher and fellow-symphonist, Vagn Holmboe, would make a rich and rewarding enough occasion in itself.

Le Vaisseau fantôme démonté sur les quais du Rhône dans la nouvelle production de la compagnie barcelonaise Fura dels Baus : une scénographie qui marque les esprits. 

Director William Friedkin doesn’t put a dramaturgical foot wrong in his Theater an der Wien production of The Tales of Hoffmann and yet doesn’t challenge, or even engage with, any of the opera’s Romantic positions.