The Mariinsky at Edinburgh serve up near-perfect Strauss

In Tarkovsky's venerable production, the Mariinsky orchestra and chorus are brilliant – but too brilliant for their soloists, including two replacement Borises for an indisposed Mikhail Petrenko.

Rodion Shchedrin's opera mixes singing, choreography and storytelling to lend a potent sacred and mystic overlay to Nikolai Leskov's folk tale.

Isabelle Patriot-Pieri's new production is a quirky mix of traditional and the opposite; Netrebko shows her star quality; Eyvasov impresses.

Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Opera in a vocally strong Das Rheingold, a promising beginning to Edinburgh International Festival’s Ring in concert over the coming years.

Shchedrin’s opera The Enchanted Wanderer is the complete opposite of shocking and director Alexei Stepanyuk’s staging alongside Valery Gergiev’s command over the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra revealed something of a translucid daydream.

Valery Gergiev brings George Tsypin's Ring staging to a spectacular close with Götterdämmerung in Birmingham.