Performer: Kornélia Bakos

Lead by Pál Németh, the Savaria Baroque Orchestra and the Kodály Choir Debrecen are the stars of this performance of Handel's oratorio.

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.