Performer: Christian Helmer

Tcherniakov reduces Berlioz' epic to little more than Circle Time therapy, a poor way to mark the composer's anniversary year.

Love may well be a rebellious bird, but that's as nothing to maverick director Dmitri Tcherniakov, whose twisted staging for Festival d'Aix reimagines Bizet's opera as a radical therapy session.

Gounod's Faust returns after 45 years to the National Dutch Opera, and this new production directed by Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus, lead by a fine cast and conducted by Marc Minkowski is nothing short of spectacular.

Puccini's Il Trittico, performed last night at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, is a unique item in the repertoire: a series of three one act operas with little to link them except the composer's conceit of what would work together in an evening. Each opera clocks in at something under an hour, and despite the relatively short duration, each has plenty of time to develop its characters.

Au Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux, l'opéra de Beethoven et ses excellents interprètes trouvent un cadre idéal. La mise en scène de Pauline Laidet et la réduction instrumentale de Gabriel Pidoux ne manquent pas de qualités.

Le metteur en scène imagine une mise en abyme qui montre ses limites. Sur le plan musical c'est en revanche une réussite, de Nathalie Stutzmann à la baguette à Stéphanie d'Oustrac dans le rôle-titre.