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The chance to watch their finely gauged interpretation unfold on the Royal Festival Hall platform was a privilege.

An exemplary cast, an opulent orchestra and unforgettable images in Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder.

A successful production for a scandalous opera which exercised a broad influence on the musical theatre of the 20th century.

Dutch National Opera opens its season with a musically and visually staggering world premiere: the first ever operatic staging of Arnold Schoenberg’s heaven-storming Gurre-Lieder.

A modern, simple production of Simon Boccanegra at Dresden's Semperoper, doesn’t interfere with the action.  

Dating from 2008, the Semperoper’s current production of Rigoletto is quite intriguing. It’s set in what appears to be a swanky 21st-century Berlin apartment – industrial, sparse and effortlessly cool – and in many ways this is an interesting choice.

When Richard Strauss first wrote Salome, he was unable to get it performed in his home city of Vienna, so shocking was the material with its heavy eroticism and necrophiliac ending (the première was in Dresden). A century on, times are more permissive, and Salome features in the seasons both of Vienna's Volksoper and of the Staatsoper, where we saw it last night.

Mit einer festspielwürdigen Besetzung führt Christian Thielemann die Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden zur der Wiederaufnahme der Meistersinger von Nürnberg an.

Markus Marquardt und Stefan Cerny imponieren in einer nüchternen Inszenierung an der Volksoper Wien.

François Xavier Roth gibt mit Salome in Köln sein Strauss-Operndebüt, das ebenso packend wie die Inszenierung von Ted Huffman ist.