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This revival of Kratzer’s production forces the audience to confront where personal responsibility starts and stops for acting under a tyrannical regime, while bringing Beethoven’s only opera to life – with a few twists.

A fully-staged performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold transforms Walt Disney Concert Hall to an opera house where the orchestra is the star. 

The Bayerische Staatsoper's revival of a controversial production containing Georg Baselitz’s artwork succeeds with strong musical performances led by veterans of Wagnerian operas.

Unlike many Flutes, David McVicar's 2003 production treats Mozart's score as a proper opera, albeit with romp instead of pomp. 

Irene Théorin and Andreas Schager lead a stunning musical performance, as Guy Cassiers vision of The Ring becomes clear.  

Daniel Barenboim conducts much of Siegfried as an intimate chamber opera, resulting in an unexpected musical joy, with an excellent cast of singers headed by Michael Volle’s Wanderer.

Daniel Barenboim led a performance of deliberate tempo with a great ensemble of singers.  Guy Cassiers‘ production, while visually stunning at times, does little to enhance the performance.

With Andris Nelsons' withdrawal from Bayreuth last year, the BSO’s summer home, Tanglewood, became the venue for his Wagner with a concert performance of Das Rheingold

Stefan Vinke was a convincing, petulant, pouty Siegfried in the third episode in Wagner's Ring cycle in Vienna.

A festive air was palpable – the house was technically sold out – as the first of a set of three Ring cycles launched at the Wiener Staatsoper. 

An uncompromising approach to the unfinished score of Berg's opera results in a compelling musical and dramatic interpretation.

Renée Fleming has decided the time is right to bow out gracefully from the operatic stage, choosing her signature role to bid the fondest of farewells to London.

Frankfurt Opera's 2012 production of Götterdämmerung with its emphasis on the contemporary human issues was a successful conclusion of the revived Ring.

The third installament of the Ring in Frankfurt took full advantage of the architecturally ingenius set to complement great music making by the orchestra and singers.

Sebastian Weigle leads a somewhat light-footed but satisfying account with a fine orchestra and good ensemble of singers in an architecturally stunning production.

Staatsoper Berlin's Götterdämmerung featured memorable vocal performances from Iréne Theorin and Andreas Schager, with Daniel Barenboim and his orchestra providing the rest of the drama.

A strong performance at Staatsoper Berlin of the third opera of the Ring, Siegfried, was a showcase for tenor Andreas Schager in the title role.

The revival of Das Rheingold at Staatsoper Berlin was still marred by distracting use of dancers on stage, but musically it was a great success. 

Otto Schenk's Vienna production of Der Rosenkavalier has been mounted 366 times since its 1968 inauguration and there is definitely no demand for a new one.

An uneven yet unforgettable performance, thanks to conductor Jaap van Zweden’s seductive colouring of the score and Jennifer Wilson’s refulgent Isolde.

Nina Stemme leads a successful revival of the Schenk production with a brilliant orchestra led by a passionate Ádám Fischer.

Czech conductor energises the London Philharmonic in three contrasting works, including one of the 20th century's greatest choral masterpieces.

Ariadne auf Naxos is the ideal Viennese opera: an entertainment by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal that satirises the relationship between composer and patron.

Nina Stemmes' glorious Brünnhilde crowns a towering performance of Götterdämmerung at the Vienna State Opera. 

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These wise words have fortunately not fallen on deaf ears at the Opéra de Paris, who have brought back their production of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and designed by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, first presented in Paris back in 2007.

Think of all the adjectives typically used to report on the best of female Wagner singing; add lyrical phrasing and imagine the absence of any shrillness, and you have come as close as possible to a description of the perfection that Nina Stemme achieved in her first Isolde for the Wiener Staatsoper.

A new production of Ariadne auf Naxos is a major draw in itself, but a queue for standing room whose end is on the other side of the opera house is news even in Vienna, especially when the performance is not the première, but the fourth in a run of five and also the one that Franz Welser-Möst left to Jeffrey Tate, who has conducted the piece to positive reviews before.

Never a city to shy away from seasonal programming, this Easter Vienna is offering productions of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Gounod’s Faust, and Wagner’s Parsifal. The latter two, at the Staatsoper, are familiar, but audiences should run to see the Theater an der Wien’s enthralling revival of Poulenc’s relatively rarely-produced masterwork.