Performer: Stefan Bolliger

A bland updating ends up flattening the contrasts and social satire that Verdi’s opera wants to highlight. 

A classic opera buffa gets an update by Rolando Villazón to a produce a staging that celebrates the timeless vitality of Rossini’s comic imagination.

At the start of his farewell to Deutsche Oper Berlin, Sir Donald Runnicles shines with his orchestra, supplying the passion and tension withheld in Michael Thalheimer’s production.

Adela Zaharia is cast as a Violetta for whom the party never stops in this revival of Tatjana Gürbaca's busy staging at Dutch National Opera. 

The first premiere of the new Staatsoper season is a qualified success, led by Eleanora Buratto's superb Suor Angelica and Ambrogio Maestri's masterly Gianni Schicchi in Puccini's triptych of one-act operas. 

Director Tatjana Gürbaca and Czech conductor Tomáš Netopil deliver a “Romantic” Kátya Kabanová from the Grand Théâtre de Genève at Brno’s Janáček Festival.