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The director drains the life out of an impassioned opera with a staging devoid of authenticity and ideas.

An unusual double bill pairing of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero opens at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. 

Bieito’s vivid production of Bizet's most famous work is a classic; his attack on toxic masculinity is visceral, made more potent by an excellent leading pair of singers.

Calixto Bieito takes on Prokofiev's Tolstoy epic – and wins in the opera's Hungarian premiere. 

The Spanish director's emotionally-sapped staging for the Prague National Theatre travels to Brno for the Janáček Festival.

Powerful visuals can't compensate for an otherwise empty production of Janáček’s gripping tragedy.

Calixto Bieito's surreal production of Erwin Schulhoff's forgotten opera takes the audience to the heart of darkness.

Dressed in white, with an origami swan in his hand, Robert Alagna's Lohengrin is less a Grail knight than an absent-minded daydreamer.

Bieito’s Carmen is now a mainstay of ENO's repertoire, but with an excellent central cast led by Sean Panikkar and Justina Gringytė, the production feels entirely fresh. 

Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (The Branded One) is an unsettling work given the storyline’s background of abduction and clandestine sexual abuse. Calixto Bieito, as expected, eschews ambiguity regarding what goes on behind the scenes, and casts even the titular cripple Alviano Salvago in a damning light.

Calixto Bieito sets Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in a hedonist, decadent society whose citizens are defined by their egotism, ambition and sexual exploits.

The Spanish director offers a controversial angle but tones it down to focus on dark psychology rather than spectacle in his staging of Schrecker's hothouse opera.

A typically thought-provoking production of The Trojans from Calixto Bieito combines with a thrilling musical performance to compensate for a heavily fileted version of Berlioz's magnum opus.

Calixto Bieito's Tosca, despite an intriguingly modern setting, fails to make sparks fly.

A powerful and emotional staging by Bieito with five-star performances from both leads.  

Based on the ancient tragedies by Aeschylus, Oresteia makes a great case for composer Iannis Xenakis’s concept of “total theatre”.

The revival of Calixto Bieito's Carmen in Oslo proves a bumpy ride, with uneven singing and orchestral playing, saved by Katarina Bradić's captivating portrayal of the title heroine.

If you think you know Carmen, think you know Calixto Bieto, then you definitely should head to the Opera House and have your eyes opened on both counts.

Calixto Bieito's staging of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is violent, shocking and uniquely powerful.

Calixto Bieito’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen isn't without controversy. San Francisco Opera gave us raw sexuality unvarnished by any degree of social refinement.

Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera is – for him – a tame affair. 

Can classic opera reflect the political status of the society in which it is performed? Calixto Bieito's production of Turandot for Northern Ireland Opera raises some uncomfortable questions.

Calixto Bieito's production of Carmen attempts to humanise the title character, but in doing so leaves the rest as caricatures.

The lack of shock value in Calixto Bieito’s interpretation of Wagner's Tannhäuser premiering at the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent could almost be seen as a disappointment. All the more surprising then was the romantic intimacy created in this superlatively sung production.

Calixto Bieito  updates the Carmen to the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and in Joan Anton Rechi’s revival, the results are often gritty and fierce, if unlikely to do anything for the Spanish tourist trade.

Bieito and Oper Stuttgart's Platée is a true riot, with outstanding vocal performances from Thomas Walker in the cross-dressing title role, and Lenneke Ruiten as a rock star, guitar-toting La Folie.

Calixto Bieito's production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann is astoundingly sung, but suffers from excessive cuts and occasionally odd direction.

Calixto Bieito's The Tales of Hoffmann at the Norwegian National Opera contains some very effective and at times striking moments, but the production turned out something of a disappointment overall.

In his production of Fidelio for English National Opera, director Calixto Bieito sets out to completely contradict the work’s central tenet.

Carmen has always been in my head as a “pretty” opera: lovely tunes, colourful setting, exotically alluring gypsy brushing up against hunky bullfighter and handsome soldier - not exactly French Grand Opera, perhaps, but a far cry from gritty verismo.

Beethoven took over nine years to write and edit Fidelio, his only opera. It tells the story of Leonore, whose husband Florestan is being illegally held in prison. She disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison in an attempt to save him.

Germany is the land of Regie-Theater, opera in which the director’s vision is paramount, and where that vision frequently contains an alternative tale in a modern setting based on thoughts that the opera has inspired in the director.