Performer: Susanna Andersson

Luigi Nono's epic treatment of the Prometheus myth took over a fomer turbine hall in the heart of the Ruhr.

Konwitschny's bold approach to Rihm's musical dialectic surprises, challenges, and bewilders. The glorious soundscape created in the Felsenreitschule makes this Eroberung von Mexico a unique, unmissable operatic experience. 

Listening is the only requirement for travelling through the spatial soundscapes of Luigi Nono’s rarely performed masterpiece Prometeo. Looking almost got in the way at the Holland Festival.

Those who feel that country house opera is in some way not the real thing, just an excuse to dress up and picnic on manicured lawns, should hie to Garsington’s new Die Entführung aus dem Serail with all speed.

“All music – smiles the minister – is incidental.” So says one of the two singers in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Into the Little Hill, performed to perfection in Wigmore Hall by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group this Saturday.

While there’s no reason that a children’s opera should be simple or easy, there’s no real need for it to be difficult either. So I was a little confused going into the Barbican’s performance of Oliver Knussen’s brilliant brace of Maurice Sendak adaptations this Saturday, which was surrounded, despite the works’ subject matter, with a slightly unbecoming aura of seriousness.