Performer: Peter Jelosits

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

Carole Wilson’s Herodias almost upstages Lise Lindstrom’s sexy Salome in a fine revival of Boleslaw Barlog's 1972 production in Vienna.

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, in its new production by Marco Arturo Marelli, features excellent singing from top to bottom, tight orchestral playing, beautiful lighting, and a decisive lack of cowboys, saloons and other “Wild West” clichés. Set in a modern-day mining village in the middle of somewhere vast and gorgeous, the production focuses on the social interplay and struggles of the miners.