Performer: Marko Letonja

Philippe Arlaud’s production for New National Theatre Tokyo may not be in its first youth, but it delivers on all counts. Leonardo Capalbo, Egils Siliņš and Yuka Kobayashi lead an excellent cast.

An all-day Beethoven experience European style with both highs and lows: much diversity revealed and exploited but of variable quality.

Nina Stemme returns to Hobart and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Marko Letonja, with an all-Wagner concert, ably assisted by Swedish bassJohn Lundgren 

Ragnarök: the Swedish title for Götterdämmerung resonates with Old Norse folk memories of universal inundation and overthow of the order of the gods.

A performance of Wagner's Siegfried stands or falls by its titular hero and Lars Cleveman is highly experienced. 

Stemme as Brünnhilde delivered her opening battle cry in Victorian riding habit like one of Trollope's racier fox- hunting heroines.