Performer: Enrico Dovico

Tradition and modernity are a mismatch in this uneven production of Mozart’s comic masterpiece.

The National Theater opens the new opera season with a gripping, thought-provoking production of Bellini's romantic tragedy.

Since 2013 marks a Verdi anniversary, the Viennese have been treated to two new productions of Il trovatore: Philipp Stölzl’s pacey, offbeat deconstruction that will open in Berlin next week, and this Volksoper co-production with the Theater Bonn where the curtain goes down after every scene.

Smetana wrote Prodaná nevěsta (“The Bartered Bride”) as a light Czech folk piece in a playful reply to critics who said that his music was too Wagnerian, or too German for that matter – something not compatible with the growing Czech national consciousness in the period he composed it (1863–66), even though he only showed mild interest in the Czech cause.