Performer: Pavel Kolgatin

A new, successful production by Leiser and Caurier supports a great cast of Rossini specialists, with Teresa Iervolino, Paolo Bordogna and Davide Luciano in the lead roles.

Frederic Wake-Walker sticks to a vapid pop-parody that demeans the intellectual message of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.

Vienna State Opera offered a solid production in which precious little gleamed.

Strauss' penultimate opera is treated to a lavish if superficial staging at the Salzburg Festival, but the real rewards come from the musical performance of this unjustly neglected work.

In Vienna State Opera's new production of Rigoletto, director Pierre Audi brings us close to a Rigoletto less freakish, more identifiably everyday. 

Ariadne auf Naxos is the ideal Viennese opera: an entertainment by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal that satirises the relationship between composer and patron.