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Revived at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the notorious opera director’s take stirs sympathy for Salome, but leans on some of his theatrical hobby-horses

Damiano Michieletto is entrusted with the first staging of Lohengrin in Rome for 50 years, but his distracting staging is redeemed by the musical side of things. 

Opera North's Salome, conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong at Leeds Town Hall, caught the seductive frenzy of the opera.

From a purely chronological standpoint, the original, 1750 version of Gluck’s Ezio is a pre-reform opera. A performance as carefully curated and persuasive as Odyssey Opera’s, however, proves how deceptive chronological classifications can be.

English National Opera’s first staging of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece is a musical and dramatic triumph.

ENO's revival of Jonathan Miller's 2009 production is musically solid, but falls short of the dramatic intensity achieved in previous years.

Visually and vocally beautiful, but the case for updating the setting of this story is not made.

This autumn is Strauss and Freud season in London: while the Royal Opera are showing Charles Edwards’s searingly Freudian take on Richard Strauss’s Elektra, ENO have opted for the polar opposite mood with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Christopher Alden’s production is just as Viennese, just as laden with dreams and sexuality, but filled to the brim with gags and frivolous decadence.

It was a glass-smashing, balloon-popping, bearskin-wearing, strip-out-of-your-swimsuit-onstage kind of afternoon at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater for the opening of New York City Opera’s second production of the 2012 season, Mozart’s Così fan tutte.Even for people who’ve seen this opera before, I’ll bet they’ve never seen a Così like this one.

Die Inszenierung von Kirill Serebrennikov passt zwar nicht zur Atmosphäre, gesanglich – mit Klaus Florian Vogt in der Titelrolle – begeistert die Vorstellung jedoch umso mehr.

Brigitte Fassbaender inszeniert Parsifal an der Oper Frankfurt. Doch ihre Regie wirft mehr Fragen auf, als sie beantwortet. Thomas Guggeis hingegen triumphiert mit seinem Dirigat.

Claus Guth inszeniert Strauss' Oper als tiefenpsychologisches Rachespiel, bleibt jedoch mit seiner Deutung an der Oberfläche.

C'est un vrai banquet du Walhalla wagnérien qui a été proposé : extraits des Maîtres chanteurs, de Tristan... et de La Walkyrie, avec le trio Stuart Skelton – Jennifer Holloway – Mika Kares.

Une mise en scène magistrale de Christopher Alden centrée autour de l’arbre sacré, sublime la performance d’Elza van den Heever qui interprète Norma pour la première fois.