Performer: Klangforum Wien

A world première by a Czech composer highlights a strong outing by Klangforum Wien.

After Jonathan Meese's Parsifal staging was rejected by Bayreuth, he channelled his frustrations into an "arch-Parsifal" which shoots the titular hero into space, with a musical re-imagining of Wagner’s score by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang.

Requiring trained opera singers to focus primarily on acting and asking actors to sing in a renowned opera house puts everyone out of their comfort zone, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Mauricio Sotelo's world première based on El Público, a fascinating surrealist play by Federico García Lorca, mixed flamenco and tragedy to achieve a great night of opera. 

Kings Place’s Out Hear series of contemporary music is second to none in London, but these concerts – though never less than interesting – can also be strangely low-key. In a lot of ways, this Wednesday’s Out Hear concert, the last this season, was quite a big deal: a rare visit to London from leading contemporary ensemble Klangforum Wien, containing a world première.

Give the Austrian body politic a victim complex to nurse, and it will gladly let off xenophobic steam. By now this well-oiled masquerade is possessed with Pavlovian inevitability. So nothing unusual then, when populist indignation about perceived Austrian vulnerability to the ongoing Greek crisis rapidly descended into ugly national stereotyping.Measured relatively, this has been a mild outbreak.