Work: Die tote Stadt (The Dead City)

With an unsurpassed cast, devoted conducting and a brilliantly imaginative staging, the Bavarian State Opera's new production of Korngold's Die tote Stadt is a triumph.

American singers Clay Hilley and Sara Jakubiak offered performances of distinction in two fiendishly difficult roles.

In Robert Carsen's staging, the “dead city” is absent: the scenery showing a bourgeois room that one imagines overlooking a bright avenue in Vienna or Berlin rather than a dark alley in Bruges.

The wealth of visual images displayed by director Graham Vick goes with the extraordinary richness of Korngold's music.

A terrific cast, led by soprano Celine Byrne and conducted by Patrik Ringborg deliver a compelling and thrilling performance of Korngold's Die tote Stadt.