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Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen returns to Sven-Eric Bechtolf's lean but polished production with an outstanding cast, outstandingly conducted. 

The leafy parks and cobbled streets of Riga’s old town are far removed from the intense heat of the little village in the Basque Country in which Donizetti set his L'elisir d'amore, but a new production at the Latvian National Opera captures much of the spirit of the work, adroitly balancing comedy with the joys and pain of love.

Sven-Erich Bechtolf's staging of Wagner's Ring returns with Franz Welser-Möst at the helm for the final time, having recently announced his retirement of the cycle from his repertoire. 

Sven-Eric Bechtolf's staging holds a balance between philosophy and humour, but Adam Fischer's vivacious conducting is the real star of the evening.

A mixed-bag of an evening at the Sydney Opera House, with a production of Ernani imported from La Scala failing to solve the inherent challenges of the work, despite good performances from the cast.

In the tiring role of Menelaus Andreas Schager was a mighty Heldentenor, combining impressive sound power with a dazzling colour and without ever showing a moment of fatigue.

Verdi's fifth opera can be considered a blueprint for Trovatore and deserves a more regular place in the repertoire, but it needs more sincere advocacy than Bechtolf is prepared to grant.

The current stage-setting of Arabella at the Wiener Staatsoper proves that “all that’s Glittenberg” is not gold.

Bechtolf's seductively imaginative staging consists in a flat pack fairytale world full of surprises that delight like the contents of a pop up book.

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

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s minimalist staging brought the protagonists’ complicated psychological interaction into focus but to the detriment of Wagner’s myth and magic.

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. 

Under the baton of René Jacobs, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin dazzles in the Staatsoper's production of Purcell's "dramatick opera". 

Men unfaithful out of habit? Sheer madness to trust a woman? These were the great themes of what has proven to be Mozart’s most popular opera.

Any production of Le nozze di Figaro in which both Marcellina and Barbarina give star performances is ensemble casting at its finest.

According to director Sven-Eric Bechtolf,  Don Giovanni’s divine retribution for a life of pure evil and insatiable fornication is just more of the same.

In Mozart’s marvellous Così fan tutte, what begins as a harmless wager around what women left alone will do suddenly balloons into a major calamity. 

Revival of a 2014 production of Rusalka in Vienna was a great success musically with a splendid cast headed by last minute replacement Camillal Nylund.

Cardillac has a spooky, sinister fascination that both intrigues and horrifies and which is quite successfully expressed in this striking production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf.

Sir Simon Rattle concludes the Ring Cycle in Vienna with a detailed and intricate reading of the opera with an excellent cast.

The evening clearly belonged to Stephen Gould’s Siegfried and Sir Simon Rattle and Vienna Orchestra.

The second opera of the Ring Cycle in Vienna brought the best out of the orchestra and singers with a sweeping and breath taking reading of the score by Sir Simon Rattle.

Vienna Staatsoper revived Wagner's Ring Cycle with a splendid orchestral performance of Das Rheingold led by Sir Simon Rattle.

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. 

Thunderous applause, numerous curtain calls; Stoyanova, Bĕlohlávek and a strong cast enjoy a fairy-tale reception in Sven-Bechtolf´s new production of Dvorak's Rusalka at the Vienna Staatsoper.

What has made Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti’s take on Cinderella survive on the opera stage for almost 200 years now is not only the universal archetype of the downtrodden girl who is redeemed by Prince Charming, nor its enchanting music: the absence of fairy-tale symbols like the pumpkin carriage and the glass shoe (barefoot ladies would have been too outrageous a sight on an Italian

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.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912, in a production directed by Max Reinhardt. Unlike the version usually seen today, this first Ariadne was a long-winded play-opera-ballet hybrid, incorporating a full production of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme with dances to incidental music by Strauss followed by the short opera.