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The tireless Stefan Vinke wows in the title role of Opera Australia's Siegfried, in a production which harnesses technology to excellent effect.

The opening Opera Australia's much-delayed Ring cycle contains wonderful visuals, and a standout performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich, but also moments of bafflement and excess.

Orchestra and singers reached great heights in this highly lyrical and dramatically flowing Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Kent Nagano and the forces of Staatsoper Hamburg launch their new season with a production of Shostakovich's very first opera in which the ears are beguiled but the eyes are not.

Gale Edwards' Opera Australia staging of Richard Strauss' bloody opera is revived with Lise Lindstrom in the title role. 

The revival of Neil Armfield's Melbourne Ring is relaunched with a successful Rheingold, sensitively conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with an especially fine performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich.

Visual references both incongruous and perceptive abound in the third instalment of Bayreuth's musically triumphant Ring cycle.

Bayreuth's controversial Ring returns with a new conductor and a refreshed cast.

Though certainly not the most heartwarming of tales this Christmas season, this is a production one shouldn’t miss.

Castorf's anarchic take on Siegfried pushes well beyond his treatment of the earlier parts of the Ring, and not all the heroics from Stefan Vinke, Wolfgang Koch and Catherine Foster can rescue the evening.

The first installment of Frank Castorf's controversial Ring is applauded on its 2015 revival at Bayreuth, but arguably the incessant visual action detracts from the appreciation of the music. 

At the Bayerische Staatsoper, director Andreas Kriegenberg's concept for Siegfried works well, but the cast members aren't all up to the opera's challenges.

Kriegenburg's staging of Wagner's Ring cycle begins with a visually appealing but intellectually empty Rheingold.

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.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal began their collaboration on Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with utopian ambitions. Unfortunately they weren’t the same ones. For Hofmannsthal, this would finally be the opera where his poetry would be illuminated by rather than buried under the music.