Performer: Kristian Benedikt

The Llangollen International Eistedffod opens with a star-studded concert performance of Puccni's political/romantic thriller.  

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.

An impressive trio of international singers carry Opéra de Montréal's traditional new production of this Verdi tragedy.