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Sven-David Sandström’s new chamber opera fails to provide an authentic voice to a trio of 19th-century female mental patients.

Guth's production is beautiful to look at, but fails to bring out the best in Mozart's drama.

Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia is, as the title implies, not an easy opera subject-wise. It is based on André Obey’s play Le viol de Lucrèce, which in turn is partially based on Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. This was Britten’s third opera, and the first of his so-called chamber operas, operas with small orchestras and small casts.

Productions of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria which make the title character a returning war veteran, preferably one returning from a juicy topical war, are nothing new, and director Claus Guth doesn’t stretch the well-worn conceit much further in this listlessly vague staging for the Theater an der Wien.