Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Anna Viebrock

Set in a 1930s music school, Sergio Morabito, Jossi Wieler and Anna Viebrick's new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Deutsche Oper Berlin has some inspirational ideas but they often get in the way of the music.

A superb cast of singers is let down by Christoph Marthaler's cold, stilted staging as Reimann's Lear returns to its birthplace.  

Oper Stuttgart’s new production of The Queen of Spades (Pique-Dame) pushes a directorial tendency to update opera to a modern setting to an extreme.

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

Theatre director Christoph Marthaler is renowned – if notorious – for his “off the wall” productions and adherence to bad boy antics. This Viaggio was no exception.

A riveting performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, despite the absence of the golden calf, the burning bush, Sodom and Gomorrah. 

With this mesmerising version of Les contes d'Hoffmann, Marthaler has proved (as Offenbach did more than one century ago) that it is possible to love Romanticism through its satire.