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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.

Willy Decker's production, presented in Zürich in 2014, is revived at the Hamburgische Staatsoper with most of the same cast

Mozart's very notes become servant to the cause in an ingenious staging of Le nozze di Figaro by one of today's most esteemed directors.

A musically strong revival of an austere production still leaves one feeling short-changed.