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Magdalena Kozena checks whether Jonas Kaufmann has a gun in his pocket in Salzburg's new Carmen, while he hopes she washed her hands first.
Aletta Collins' traditional-looking production appears to be just a few live chickens short of Francesca Zambello's Covent Garden effort:
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Thanks to reader Benedict for spotting a special offer on next week's Verdi Requiem at the Barbican with Gergiev and his Mariinsky ensemble. Soloists are Victoria Yastrebova, Olga Borodina, Sergei Semishkur and Ildar Abdrazakov.
Lastminute.com are offering best-available tickets for just £15 (originally up to £65).
Alternatively, you could scoot over to the Barbican website, where loads of seats have been 'dynamically priced' down to £15-£25, around half what some of them were originally going for. (Now, should we tell the Barbican why their advance sales are down this season - or just let them guess?)
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English National Opera can't have much faith in Damon Albarn's ability to put bums on seats. They've already starting discounting his 'opera' Dr Dee, even though it doesn't open for three months.
Via TimeOut, Upper Circle tickets for all performances are reduced from £59 to £29.50.
Going by past experience, I suspect further (and possibly better) offers will be available closer to the date.
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Recorded at the weekend; a preview of what Vittorio Grigolo may be getting up to on Friday, when the latest revival of Rigoletto opens at Covent Garden.
(With thanks to Kyoko).
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The Wiener Staatsoper today announced a predictably starry and uncontroversial 2012-13 season. Of a massive 53 operas, just five are premieres:
Other highlights include Anna Netrebko in Eugene Onegin and a Renee Fleming Capriccio. Placido Domingo conducts Roméo et Juliette. And those are just a few of the crowd-pulling star names. "It looks a bit like a who's who of the opera world," said Director Dominique Meyer. He went on to boast that Vienna can still attract the best artists despite having lower maximum pay that its competitors.
For full details, check the Staatsoper website.
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Sweeney Todd - Adelphi Theatre, 23 March 2012
Although Broadway's answer to Wozzeck has led a parallel life in the opera house, it is at heart a musical, with all the emphasis on verbal and visual storytelling that implies. And the theatrical values of this excellent production are its greatest strength - despite a roaring trade in cast soundtrack CDs in the foyer.
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Jonas Kaufmann has told Die Welt he no longer signs autographs at the stage door for fear of catching germies from the mitts of his filthy fans. He's sorry to disappoint anyone, he says, but if he gets sick and cancels then even more people are let down.
On a more positive, if distant, note, he's signed up for more work with Antonio Pappano after Les Troyens. Plans include a recording of Aida, and Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino - all live.
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Five of this year's Glyndebourne Festival operas are to be broadcast on the Guardian's website this summer - for free, instead of up to £230 a ticket.
The Cunning Little Vixen, Le Nozze di Figaro and the double bill of L'Heure Espagnole and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges will all be streamed live. The Fairy Queen and La Cenerentola have been recorded for broadcast later. The only production from this year's Festival that won't be shown is La bohème (a David McVicar revival).
All operas will be available on demand after the initial broadcast, and we are also promised "multimedia commentary".
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La Monnaie have announced a characteristically adventurous new season for 2012/13, with the theme "an attempt to map human passion". It includes a new opera (by Belgian composer Benoît Mernier), new productions of Lucrezia Borgia, Manon Lescaut, Lulu and La Traviata and Michael Haneke's Così .
And you don't even need to book that Eurostar ticket; continuing this season's successful experiment, every opera will be streamed online.
The full list:
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The Royal Opera House have clarified their pricing policy for the 2012/13 Season.
For some main house productions - like The Minotaur - the prices will be the same as they were at their previous showing. For others - only Tosca and La bohème are mentioned - prices will be lower than they were before. (The price drop will apply to all tickets, top to bottom.) And for high-demand productions such as The Ring, Don Carlo, La Rondine and Nabucco, prices will be higher.
Here are the prices for the first part of the season (image copyright Royal Opera House):
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To add to this week's free laptop viewing, La Monnaie are streaming a recently recorded performance of Rusalka on demand from Tuesday 27 March to Monday 16 April.
Stefan Herheim's 2008 production tells the story from the Water Goblin's perspective. Yes, Rusalka is a ho, but there are no fake pussies, and Stefan Herheim's concept is bolder and clearer than Covent Garden's recent production.
Here's a trailer for its original 2008 outing:
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On Saturday 24 March the Bavarian State Opera are streaming Eugene Onegin live.
The infamous 2008 'Brokeback Mountain' production by Krzysztof Warlikowski imagines Onegin and Lensky as lovers. Much shirtlessness ensues.
And who better to pop those buttons than Simon Keenlyside and Pavol Breslik? They're joined by Ekaterina Scherbachenko, and Pietari Inkinen conducts.
Streaming begins at 7pm CET (6pm UK), and it's a once-only, live event.
This is the original 2008 trailer, with an earlier cast:
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Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma surprised visitors to Chicago's Thompson Center yesterday with an 'impromptu' recital, roping in whatever members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and local school choirs just happened to be hanging around.
Fleming, creative consultant to the Chicago Lyric opera and Ma, creative consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, were in the city for the day to promote arts education.
The three-number, 15 minute performance was crowned with this stab at America the Beautiful.
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The Salzburg Festival deserves its reputation for mindbending costliness. A survey of visitors to last year's Festival found the average foreign guest spends €550 on four tickets and stays a week, paying €2,220 for accommodation and food and so on. And that's just the average - you could easily fork out a lot more.
But you can also manage on significantly less.
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2011 audience statistics are out for Berlin's state-funded arts venues. Although the overall picture is a healthy rise in audiences, not everywhere has been so lucky, especially the opera companies.
Daniel Barenboim's Staatsoper, in its temporary premises at the Schiller Theatre, was 7,000 down on last year, and occupancy fell from 85.3% to 75.8%. Some have speculated that the Schiller is less attractive or less convenient for audiences, but I have to wonder what part 2011's rather dull programming choices played.
The Komische Oper did nearly as poorly. Its total of 157,321 visitors is 5,500 less than in 2010, and utilization fell from 61.1% to 58.9%.
The Deutsche Oper was the only house to show growth. I personally contributed to their record-busting total by attending three performances in 2011, compared with one at the Komische Oper and zero at the Staatsoper. I wasn't the only one - 11,000 additional visitors boosted its total audience to 252,000. It may have the lowest risk production style of the three houses, but could it be any coincidence that it had the most interesting and varied programme?
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An increasing number of commenters have chosen to tag themselves 'Anon'. Because this creates confusion and encourages spam, it is no longer acceptable. Any future comments signed 'Anon' or 'Anonymous' or including those words in the signature line will be automatically blocked.
I don't want to discourage anyone from commenting anonymously, but please choose a unique nickname and leave a valid email address (which will not be published).
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The Royal Opera House is to cut top ticket prices for some operas next season, claims the headline in the Evening Standard. The most expensive tickets for Tosca, for example, will be £175 instead of £210.
Buried inside the article is an explanation for the apparent largesse: "That price drop is being made up for by ticket prices elsewhere."
In other words, cheaper seats will cost more.
While the house itself increasingly becomes a rich man's ghetto, Covent Garden plan to sate the masses with an "ever-expanding programme of live performances relayed into cinemas."
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I can't recommend it myself, but you still want to see the Royal Opera House's Miss Fortune, the Evening Standard are offering stalls seats at £37.50 (the price they probably should have been sold at in the first place).
The offer is valid for the 20 March and 28 March performances.
Either use the code esfortune on the website or call the box office on 020 7304 4000 quoting Evening Standard Miss Fortune Special Offer.
Alternatively, roll up an hour or two before the show and see what discounts the box office are prepared to offer.
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As the Royal Opera House haven't yet published casting details for next season, I have created a 'Royal Opera House 2012 - 2013 season calendar' showing the full details as far as they are currently known.
You can access this at any time using the 'page' links towards the top right hand corner.
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