Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Erik Årman

Without glitz, extravagance or the need to be expressly shocking, Robert Carsen's new production of Wozzeck at the Theater an der Wien is exceptional.

Though certainly not the most heartwarming of tales this Christmas season, this is a production one shouldn’t miss.

Written in 1819 and belonging to the opera seria chapter of Rossini’s career, the florid score of La donna del lago doesn’t so much respond to as resist its unabashedly romantic libretto.

The venerable Viennese tradition of airing dirty operatic laundry in public found an unlikely proponent this season in the form of the Theater an der Wien’s mild-mannered director Roland Geyer, who, unhappy with William Friedkin’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann in March, abruptly sacked the American director and announced he would devise a new staging himself a matter of months before the sec