Juan Diego Flórez was impressive in his first portrayal of a lovesick soldier/priest in Manon, with Nino Machaidze's accomplished heroine. Andrei Serban's modern and thoughtful production was still fresh and arresting.
The outstanding trio of Nylund, Stemme and Herlitzius soars above a Vienna State Opera Orchestra in thunderous form, led by Christian Thielemann to celebrate the Staatsoper's 150th birthday in style.
Vienna staged the first three-act performance of Lulu with Willy Decker adding to his 2000 production, with excellent singing contributing to its success.
German theatre director Uwe Eric Laufenberg freely incorporates some of Stanley Kubrik’s horror story concepts into his Elektra, but in ignoring both Sophocles and Strauss, is a long way from shining.
The Wiener Staatsoper revives a beautiful production of Daphne that juxtaposes myth, dream and reality, with brilliant vocal performances by the two leads.
High intensity girl power for a complex task: Simone Young shines in the pit, Karoline Gruber’s staging convinces with expertise and attention to detail.
Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s minimalist staging brought the protagonists’ complicated psychological interaction into focus but to the detriment of Wagner’s myth and magic.
Sir David McVicar's production of Tristan und Isolde premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2013, and was then recognized as a friendly platform for singers. Here it is freshly revived with a new cast.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s impressive conducting, Tomasz Konieczny’s tortured Telramund and the Chor der Wiener Staatsoper save this performance of Lohengrin from becoming an ignominious swan song.
Cardillac has a spooky, sinister fascination that both intrigues and horrifies and which is quite successfully expressed in this striking production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf.
Within Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the darkest corners of the soul are exposed by music, stirred up by the lying, lecherous exploits of the aristocratic scoundrel, Don Giovanni.
What has made Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti’s take on Cinderella survive on the opera stage for almost 200 years now is not only the universal archetype of the downtrodden girl who is redeemed by Prince Charming, nor its enchanting music: the absence of fairy-tale symbols like the pumpkin carriage and the glass shoe (barefoot ladies would have been too outrageous a sight on an Itali
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.
