Artiste: Csaba Antal

Martin Rajna's energetic conducting and Gabriella Balga's glorious Elisabetta are the bright spots in this flashy but empty house premiere of Donizetti's classic.

Balázs Kovalik’s interpretation of Elektra is revived in Budapest, impressing until the B-movie cliché finale. 

Balázs Kovalik’s opulent staging of Boito's Faustian opera threatens to overshadow the singers, but it makes for an exciting spectacle.

Hasse’s Artaserse in Munich was a pasticcio using music from that work to tell the story of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth and to celebrate of Anja Silja. 

The Comunale had teamed up with Bologna's basketball team Virtus to create a 50%-off ticket deal aimed at drawing new audiences. The subject matter of this opera might not seem the most immediately accessible, but this was playing to capture the imaginations of opera newbies.

Rarely performed, Boito’s Mefistofele is an audacious, spectacular opera, needing an audacious, spectacular staging to do it justice. That’s exactly what it gets in Balázs Kovalik’s production for Hungarian State Opera.