Performer: Joseph Olefirowicz

Matthias Davids’ impressive production needed the dynamism of Dudamel to do justice to Bernstein’s marvellous music.  

Stephen Sondheim's gruesome masterpiece Sweeney Todd enjoys a successful and overdue première run at the Vienna Volksoper.

The message of Voltaire’s novel Candide, ou l’Optimisme is that rationality and reason, rather than custom, faith or authoritative orders should determine all human activity, and although this quintessence of the Age of Enlightenment sounds self-evident nowadays, a visit to the newspaper kiosk shows us otherwise: a lot of luridly-titled guidebooks and magazines try to talk us into believing that a