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A promising cast on paper is scuppered by a banal, monotonous production and uninspired conducting.

Willy Decker does not try to make the structure of the plot any clearer, mainly concentrating on the deeper meaning of the work. The cast was excellent.

Andreas Homoki’s new Zurich production capitalises on some quirky staging, but features superb voices in its principal roles and shows the best of the house’s joint choirs.

A terrific staging of Janáček's opera is successfully revived at the Teatro di San Carlo.

With a plethora of theatre seats, stools and benches it was as if Willy Decker and Wolfgang Gussman had been elected ‘Chair-men of the bored”.

The third installment of Semperoper Dresden’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle ups the ante with an outstanding ensemble performance.

Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra are let down by sub-optimal singers in Willy Deckers chair-laden production of  Die Walküre. 

Wagner demands vocal resilience from the large cast of singers in Das Rheingold, but Willy Decker wants strong thigh muscles as well.

Vienna staged the first three-act performance of Lulu with Willy Decker adding to his 2000 production, with excellent singing contributing to its success.

Willy Decker's production, presented in Zürich in 2014, is revived at the Hamburgische Staatsoper with most of the same cast

An exceptional musical performance was enhanced by a streamlined but ultimately moving staging in an evening of near perfection in Dresden.

In a new production of Franz Lehár’s The Land of Smiles, the stoic Sou-Chong sets the melancholy tone of the operetta by singing “Smile despite your sorrows and a thousand.. aches and pains”.

In April, Peter Mattei and Anna Netrebko were starring together in Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera. Less than a month later and they are reunited in Paris in Willy Decker's staging.

At least the colour-coded characters in Andreas Homoki’s farcical production made it easy to know which team to barrack for.

About halfway through the second act of Verdi's La traviata at the opera's second Met performance of the season, soprano Sonya Yoncheva went from being a really good Violetta to being a great Violetta.

Beczała's "Pourquoi me réveiller" stops the show in Willy Decker's thoughtful Werther at the Liceu, expertly conducted by Alain Altinoglu.

Die tote Stadt at the Vienna State Opera features strong playing and singing but little drama.

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.

A disconcerting production of The Flying Dutchman where the staging misses the boat.

Willy Decker's gloriously sung production of Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová in Oslo made for a uniquely powerful performance.

Willy Decker’s 2010 bleak, fascinating, controversial production of La traviata has returned to the Met with an entirely new cast.

An audience dominated by families enjoys Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel as the Deutsche Oper gives a demonstration of how to build the audiences of the future.

Death in Venice makes its première in Madrid with a rational and symbolic production by Willy Decker. 

Zurich's The Turn of the Screw is a masterful staging of the Benjamin Britten's musical narrative of Henry James' ghost story. 

In a new production of Wagner's Lohengrin, conductor Simone Young and stage director Andreas Homoki, along with an extraordinary cast, engineered a superb performance.

Mit Piotr Beczała in der Titelrolle und Linda Watson als Ortrud ist eben auch manchmal das Unperfekte großartig.

In der Dirndl-Inszenierung von Andreas Homoki liefern Robert Dean Smith und Annette Dasch einen gepflegten Repertoireabend.