Festival: Wiener Festwochen

Il Trovatore has doggedly survived in opera’s hit charts despite dispensing generous quantities of hair-raising as well as eyebrow-raising content. Verdi’s music is intoxicating, of course, but there is something to this work that makes it accessible beyond reasoning.

A first impression of Quartett, a 2011 chamber opera composed by Luca Francesconi and staged by Àlex Ollé (of the innovative Catalan theatre group La Fura dels Baus), may be that it presents an unapologetically modernist take on the Liaisons dangereuses story which will impenetrably hang together as some fearsomely Teutonic total artwork.

Deborah Warner’s new production of La Traviata for the Wiener Festwochen is dotted with dramatic ideas to much the same extent as flowers are strewn and champagne is uncorked in the Act I ‘Brindisi’ (drinking song), which is to say sparingly.