| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 9-Dec-2012 Volksoper Vienna | Hänsel und Gretel in a classic Volksoper production |
.jpg) Humperdinck called his greatest hit a “Kinderstubenweihfestspiel” (a festival play for the consecration of the nursery) and the course of time has proven this joke appropriate: while Parsifal around Easter is the high point of the year for Wagnerians, Hänsel und Gretel at Christmastime is for everybody (including all those who claim they can’t stand Wagner and ignore the influence he had on Humperdinck).
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| 20-Jul-2012 Prinzregententheater | Mozart's Mitridate in Munich through a child's eyes |
 Mozart wrote the opera seria Mitridate at the age of fifteen. The Bayerische Staatsoper’s clever and strangely beautiful production positions it as the work of a child, full of rebellious teenagers and projected scenery seemingly drawn from a primary school art class. But unfortunately even excellent singing and much directorial invention cannot disguise that this is a rather bland opera, and its four hours pass slowly.
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| 5-May-2012 Volksoper Vienna | Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Volksoper Vienna |
 How to stage The Abduction from the Seraglio in Vienna, a city not exactly known for its sensitivity towards its Turkish minority? Mozart’s opera doesn’t, it should be said, contain nearly as much politically incorrect embarrassment as the rhetoric of some of Austria’s modern-day political parties, but the abusive boor Osmin and the Western women enslaved by his short-fused ganglord are images which no self-respecting German director worth their conceptual salt is going to allow appear – at least unmediated – on an operatic stage.
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