In a dated production by Hans Neuenfels, conductor Giacomo Sagripanti leads a musically successful Trovatore, where Angela Meade and Anita Rachvelishvili show their vocal brilliance.
Deutsche Oper Berlin's Salome was a mixed blessing: a magnificent Catherine Naglestad as the heroine, with good ensemble of singers and orchestra, but a thoughtful but far-fetched psychological interpretation.
Rattle conducts Janáček's glorious score with unerring skill and barely concealed adoration, but is let down by his regular collaborator's muddy vision.
The late director Patrice Chereau's last work, Elektra, was brilliantly realized at the Met, with special credit to conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soprano Nina Stemme.
Michaela Kaune, Albert Pesendorfer, Eun Yee You and Elīna Garanča transported the audience to a lost time and place, even while embodying their characters’ ultimate timelessness.
Catherine Foster's Brünnhilde bathes Bayreuth's Siegfried in a warm glow, while Wolfgang Koch sings a superb Wanderer. But director Frank Castorf does his best to subvert both.
In this second year of Bayreuth's bicentennial Der Ring, Oleg Bryjak shines as an outstanding Alberich. Frank Castorf's production is striking but as yet incomprehensible.
The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper Berlin is an interesting, well-sung and well-performed classic. Set in an agrarian world where Sarastro is less a high priest than he is a benevolent farmer-king, Günter Krämer’s 1991 production does not subvert the opera’s problems so much as it highlights them.
