Performer: Matthias Klink

Tobias Kratzer's prelude to this new Ring cycle exceeds all expectations and scores a musical-theatrical success.

The world premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie's Melancholie des Widerstands at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden marks the birth of a new genre – the film-opera – starring conductor Marie Jacquot and Philippe Jaroussky. 

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. 

What does opera in the 21st century look and sound like? Streets removed from anything Mozart, Verdi or Wagner would have recognised. But Salvatore Sciarrino is his own man.

A superb cast of singers is let down by Christoph Marthaler's cold, stilted staging as Reimann's Lear returns to its birthplace.