Performer: Erika Markovics

This double cast, nine-day revival of Vadim Milkov's staging of Pique Dame offers a relatively straight reading of Tchaikovsky's opera about the obsessive Pushkin-based character Herman. Embracing the opera's choral and dance passages, spectacle and pageantry are paramount; the drama's surreal and more nuanced dimensions could have been better profiled.

Although with a promising concept, the Hungarian State Opera’s new production ultimately proved underdirected.

Inadequate production and mixed performances characterize the Hungarian State Opera's new Trovatore.

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.

Iréne Théorin provides a spellbinding immolation scene, while Adam Fischer conjures a flawless orchestral performance to conclude Budapest's Der Ring des Nibelungen.