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At MusikTheater an der Wien, Miroslav Srnka’s new opera provess a deeply compelling, meticulously crafted work. It may not uplift, but it sears itself into the memory.

Damiano Michieletto directs a slick and frequently hilarious staging of Prokofiev's comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery. 

In a week where Vienna welcomes two new productions of Bellini's Norma, MusikTheater an der Wien sets a high bar with Vasily Barkhatov's staging. 

What do you get for the composer who made – and also kind of broke – everything? Arnold Schoenberg’s well-documented phobia of the number 13 aside, he could not have asked for a superior tribute in his 150th anniversary year.

Martin G Berger exhaustively reworks the story and the libretto of Salieri's Cublai, gran kan de' Tartari and throws the kitchen sink at this new production, but not everything lands well. 

Lydia Steier's new production of Candide is a kaleidoscopic celebration of Leonard Bernstein's varied musical idioms. 

Vasily Barkhatov directs a new production of Mieczysław Weinberg's rarely staged, massive and unwieldy opera at the MuseumsQuartier. 

“Lima darf nicht Österreich werden!” Offenbach's operetta is set in Lima, but really it’s Vienna in director Nikolaus Habjan uproarious production. 

There is magic aplenty in director Stefan Herheim’s bold recontextualization of Gian Carlo Menotti's holiday opera. 

Herheim’s maiden voyage in his new capacity as Intendant confirms his ability to deftly negotiate a less-than-straightforward work with care and ambition and add his own voice enthusiastically to the mix.

Director Lotte De Beer's thoroughly realized, aesthetically rich and beautifully executed production of Janáček's masterpiece is anchored by strong performances from Nina Stemme and Svetlana Aksenova.

“How Excellent.”  The first words sung in Handel’s Saul are in praise of God and were first uttered in a performance nearly three centuries ago. But they apply equally to Claus Guth’s interpretation of the work staged by Theater an der Wien.

Leoncavallo's opera is a rare example of a tragic, verismo opera where not a soul dies... neither by natural causes nor foul play.  

Keith Warner directs a new opera which packs in betrayal, murder, oppression, freedom, love and the Spanish Inquisition into a mere 90 minutes.

Sam Brown's sparse production leaves nothing to focus on but the individual protagonists on stage. 

Director Nikolaus Habjan took Oberon’s inherent miscellany and ran with it, straight into a retro-futurism aesthetic.

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

Vienna's Theater an der Wien stage a seldom performed opera by Carl Maria von Weber with an excellent cast, orchestra, and chorus.  

Fine orchestral sound and outstanding solo singing from Sarah Connolly and Steve Davislim aren't enough to compensate for poor balance and timing in Beethoven's great choral work.

Osborn absolutely lives the part; he negotiated formidable heights, intricate passage work and the sheer volume of notes with style and clarity as well as colour and nuance. 

Marlis Petersen's Alcina bloomed for a knockout “Ah! mio cor!” just in time for intermission.

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.

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.

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.

At the Theater an der Wien, director Mariame Clément and novelist Lucy Wadham have crafted innovative material that brings the old-fashioned lyrics to life in a coherent and contemporary dramatic setting.

Anno Schreier's successful new opera Hamlet is the first of a series of three Shakespeare-inspired offerings from Theater an der Wien this season. 

René Jacobs conducted the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an outstanding performance of Mozart's Idomeneo as part of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival

Early Mozart opera seria triumphs in Vienna’s ‘other house’.

Requiring trained opera singers to focus primarily on acting and asking actors to sing in a renowned opera house puts everyone out of their comfort zone, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

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

Bach is music for the soul, and when excellent musicians are performing it, it cannot fail to be beautiful. Thanks to the considerable strengths of the many involved, there is really no better way to spend a weekend in Lent than lamenting through a Bach Passion in the Konzerthaus. 

The Stepford wife, the doubting priest, the guilt-ridden adulteress, the family black sheep and the outsted, suicidal CEO:  staples in television dramas but surprising finds in Handel oratorio.

It often takes time to adjust to Nikolaus Harnoncourt's tempi, but this concert performance of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro enabled the audience to discover new colours in a well known score. 

Out of the swamp: Marcel Beekman rocks the house in Robert Carsen’s glittering take on Platée.

If you are going to see Verdi’s I due Foscari, this production is likely the way to do it. Although this production is by no means unflawed, there are several reasons that it is a must-see for opera fans in Vienna.

Schubert's unfinished oratorio Lazarus joined with other interesting works by both Schubert and Charles Ives in a staged performance at the Theater an der Wien, directed by Claus Guth. Strongly cast, the musical juxtaposition works better than the oratorio itself, and the rather cold dramaturgy.

Come for the singing, enjoy the music and bring your sunglasses: this psychologically charged Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien is not to be missed.

Iain Bell’s new opera A Harlot’s Progress, premièred at the Theater an der Wien this month, has much going for it. Its chances for making it into modern repertory are good – if people can handle the depressing plot.

My mother always told me not to sit too close in the theatre, and after seeing this revival of Martin Kusej’s modern realization of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien, I think I know what she was talking about.Act I begins innocuously enough in a sparse apartment, unfurnished apart from a mattress and a television.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Attila is not an opera that one hears often. Composed during his self-styled “galley period” – before he found his mature musical voice with Rigoletto – Attila has inherent musical and dramaturgical weaknesses. With one foot still firmly rooted in bel canto tradition, the numerous cabalettas can be exhausting, even ridiculous, considering the dramatic nature of the text.

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.

Béatrice et Bénédict is Hector Berlioz’s last work; he wrote it between 1860 and 1862 for the theatre that patron Edouard Bénazet had built in Baden-Baden, then Germany’s most chic health resort.

The Theater an der Wien has a storied history with Fidelio, having hosted the première of the work’s first and second versions in 1805 and 1806 respectively.

In times where musical luxury is sometimes associated with having a pop star perform a short “Happy Birthday” and a handful of songs in a private performance – and for a usually undisclosed (and indecent) fee, having a whole piece of music composed for an occasion, or organising a private performance by a famous orchestra, is almost unimaginable.

When Jean-Christophe Spinosi stepped onto the podium to conduct Le Comte Ory that night, he didn’t wait for his applause to cease, but instantly cued a hearty forte from the Ensemble Matheus, and consequently a few incredulous looks from the audience.

Institutional violence has been a running theme in Torsten Fischer’s series of Gluck operas at the Theater an der Wien, albeit with a lid kept firmly on the idea of actual conflict.

The position of Composer in Residence at the Grafenegg festival may as well be called Composer-Conductor in Residence, as the appointments of Tan Dun, HK Gruber, and now James MacMillan have established a tradition whereby the lucky candidates are not only required to be intimately involved with the programming and preparation of their music, but also to stand in front of an orchestra and lead the

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