Performer: Melba Ramos

Movable walls, some adorned with Baroque frescoes, partition the stage in ways that remind the viewer of the easy proximity of the masters and servants' quarters in Almaviva's estate.

Since 2013 marks a Verdi anniversary, the Viennese have been treated to two new productions of Il trovatore: Philipp Stölzl’s pacey, offbeat deconstruction that will open in Berlin next week, and this Volksoper co-production with the Theater Bonn where the curtain goes down after every scene.

Manon, Mimi, Tosca and Cio-Cio San. Why does Puccini send these women to such heartless deaths? It’s a question which musicologist Mosco Carner answered in the 1950s with a speculative Freudian reduction (the composer apparently had a debilitating mother complex).