Performer: Torsten Kerl

At the Enescu Festival n Bucharest Vladimir Jurowski celebrates the centennial of Die Frau one Schatten’s premiere.

Staging the story of the Italian political figure Rienzi as that of a dictator in 20th-century Germany was an inspired idea. This revival was a rare occasion to experience Wagner's early opera. 

Catherine Foster returns, in the Ruhr, to the role of Isolde with Torsten Kerl in a new production of Tristan und Isolde .

A musically strong revival of an austere production still leaves one feeling short-changed.

At the basic level Tristan und Isolde is an opera of hormones, not happenings; fathoms deeper it explores human experience at a point where sense is dumb and flesh retires – as close to heaven and hell as it’s possible to go without first having to die.

A great love story as well as a cultural and musical shock as it has been from the beginning, this performance of Tristan und Isolde in Naples was led by an inspired Zubin Metha.