Performer: Evelin Novak

Newly General Music Director Christian Thielemann and Jan Philipp Gloger bring Richard Strauss' Die schweigsame Frau to the Staatsoper Berlin for the first time, but la commedia is hardly stupenda. 

With Claus Guth directing and Simone Young on the podium, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden's new production of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina proves that the past isn't really past. 

Who needs a stage, sets or costumes, when opera can move us like this? Agneta Eichenholz leads a terrific cast in a concert performance of Janáček's searing opera.