Baritone Michael Volle stars as the caddish knight Falstaff, gleefully tormented by a trio of clever women who deliver his comeuppance, in Verdi’s glorious Shakespearean comedy. Maestro Daniele Rustioni takes the podium to oversee a brilliant ensemble cast that features sopranos Hera Hyesang Park and Ailyn Pérez, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, tenor Bogdan Volkov, and baritone Christopher Maltman.

The Vienna State Opera is staging Otto Schenk's production of Gaetano Donizetti's "L'elisir d'amore" (The Elixir of Love), which combines humor and drama with a happy ending. Maria Nazarova sings the role of Adina and Bogdan Volkov sings the role of Nemorino. Already extremely popular during Donizetti's lifetime, this opera buffa tells the story of the young farmer Nemorino, who is in love with the wealthy landowner Adina. With the help of a love potion from the charlatan Doctor Dulcamara, he hopes to win her heart.

Tsar Saltan marries the youngest of three sisters, having heard that it is her dearest wish to present him with a heroic son and heir. Her jealous sisters and the old Aunt Barbaricha cannot bear this situation to persist and by trickery see to it that the Tsaritsa and her newborn son Gvidon are thrown into the sea. In their barrel they are washed ashore on an enchanted island where the rapidly growing tsar’s son saves a swan from the clutches of a wizard. In gratitude, the swan helps Gvidon to visit his native country once again in the guise of a bumblebee. Three wishes, three miracles and three bee-stings later, father and son are finally able to get to know each other.

As Christof Loy put it: Così fan tutte invites us to embrace the complexity of life and face the future with heads held high. In his staging of the version he abridged with Joana Mallwitz for the Salzburg Festival 2020 the focus is wholly on the figures and the subtle choreography of their emotional states — in a space that like a magnifying glass exposes the intricate mechanisms between the characters. In this way the production leads the protagonists and the audience to experience the ‘serene calm’ that can perhaps indeed cure our own ‘distempers’.

The support group for opera addicts is in session, and its participants perform Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery. Rarely performed outside Russia, and consigned to oblivion by Andrei Zhdanov's anti-formalist policies after the Second World War, the work is transformed by Dmitri Tcherniakov's extravagant staging. Under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, an all-star cast featuring Aida Garifullina and Violeta Urmana bring the characters to life on stage at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla continues her high-profile championship of the works of the composer Mieczysław Weinberg with this new Salzburg Festival production of his final opera, The Idiot, with a libretto based on Dostoevsky’s great novel of innocence destroyed by corrupt society. Featuring music of great power and intensity, the opera, completed in 1985, showcases Weinberg’s remarkable skill as a musical dramatist, while this new production by Krzysztof Warlikowski promises to mark a watershed in its brief performance history.

Dialogues of the Carmelites. Opera in three acts and twelve scenes by Francis Poulenc, based on the play by Georges Bernanos. Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma conducted by Michele Mariotti, directed by Emma Dante.

“Eugene Onegin tells a love story that doesn’t work”. This is how Ralph Fiennes sums up the plot of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera, inspired by Pushkin’s work. A jaded young dandy, Onegin sets shy Tatiana on fire at first sight. Overcoming her reticence, she writes him a passionate love letter. Alas, he brutally refuses, giving her a lecture on morality. However, years later, after a duel, he falls in love with the young woman who is now Prince Gremin’s wife. Will she yield to his advances? Fascinated by Russian culture and attuned to the dramatic intensity of Tchaikovsky’s music, Ralph Fiennes is directing his first opera. If he chooses to use pictorial simplicity to evoke the Russian countryside or a ballroom, it is all the better to emphasise the emotions of the characters, as complex as they are modern.