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A haunting, musically compelling impression of a woman whose life was shaped by creation, loss, and unfulfilled thirst for personal expression.

Barbara Hannigan is better than ever in Krzysztof Warlikowski's iconic Lulu at La Monnaie – an historic event.

The Salzburg Festival's production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld is another classic in the making from Barrie Kosky.

What brought real distinction and authenticity to the evening, as so often in this house, was the outstanding playing of the Staatskapelle conducted by Tomaš Netopil. From the start of the overture with its rapidly scurrying fugato for strings and pointed phrasing from the woodwind one felt the true sense of Smetana’s Czech inflected rhythms and harmonies

It is all very easy on the eyes, although pondering what it is all supposed to mean is a recipe for a migraine.

Performing both works for the first time, the RCO capered crisply through Shostakovich’s Suite from The Nose and played sumptuously in Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, with captivating songstress Wende.

Kosky’s The Nose hits Sydney, sweeping the audience along with hallucinogenic energy. Led by the outstanding Martin Winkler and John Tomlinson, singers and musicians deliver a wild evening's entertainment.

Hagen, the first chapter in the Theater an der Wien's reimagining of The Ring, features music from Das Rhinegold and Götterdämmerung woven seamlessly together, telling the story from the perspective of Hagen, son of Nibelung dwarf, Alberich.

After Jonathan Meese's Parsifal staging was rejected by Bayreuth, he channelled his frustrations into an "arch-Parsifal" which shoots the titular hero into space, with a musical re-imagining of Wagner’s score by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang.

I arrived at the Royal Opera House in the usual way, settled into my seat, and – could you believe it – the opera was gone!

German director Christof Loy’s second production for the Royal Swedish opera was of Wagner’s Parsifal. The cast is rather on the luxurious side as well, sporting three of the greatest Wagner singers working today – two of them Swedish, no less!Loy’s Parsifal is a distinctly human drama.

Before writing a note of Gogol, composer Lera Auerbach immersed herself in the writer’s complete works and over twenty books written about him. It would take similar efforts to begin to understand this opera: taking us inside the fevered mind of its title character, Gogol is less a biographical narrative set to music than a phantasmagorical, psychological investigation.