Performer: Marta Świderska

Opening the new opera season, Kent Nagano powerfully directs Mussorgsky's great psychodrama about a famous tsar, marred only by Frank Castorf's visually confusing and symbolically overweighted production. 

Despite some fine young voices, a concert staging of The Rake's Progress proves problematic in Hamburg.

Hamburg's revival of a 2015 production is a musical success, but the director's concepts are sometimes too dense to tell a straightforward story.

Neither Sir Walter Scott nor Donizetti were well served by the farcical staging, but finally bellissimo bel canto prevailed over the production.

An uncompromising approach to the unfinished score of Berg's opera results in a compelling musical and dramatic interpretation.

A musically strong revival of an austere production still leaves one feeling short-changed.