Performer: Michael Mayer

Nadine Sierra's thrilling Violetta deserves better than Michael Mayer's superficial production revived at the Metropolitan Opera.

Michael Mayer’s colorful and busy production of La traviata returned to the Met with a triumphant performance of the title role by soprano Aleksandra Kurzak.

A new production of La Traviata, colorful and conventional, brings little new ideas but is a fine vehicle for a fine performance conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin that features a trio of excellent singers.

The cast, sets, costumes and direction of Muhly's opera Marnie impress, but the music somehow falls short of expectations.

A decent cast was unable to redeem a fundamentally dull opera that lacks the psycholgical complexity and tension of both the original Graham novel and its famous Hitchcock adaptation.

The gambling tables and neon lights of Las Vegas might not be the images which immediately enter your head when you think of Verdi’s Rigoletto, but bold art is often created and progressed by the pushing of boundaries and by challenging audiences to reimagine the familiar.