Given director Stefan Herheim’s previous successes in realising the most conspicuously magical episodes of Rheingold and delineating the subtle character drama of Walküre, one had high hopes that he might even be able to pull off the impossible task of creating a Siegfried that didn’t drag in its opening acts.

Stone se ha arriesgado con uno de los títulos más “sagrados” de la historia del género y la pirueta se le ha ido de las manos.Lo que nos ha narrado en escena, con una factura técnica absolutamente impecable, eso sí, no es Tristán e Isolda, ni siquiera una interpretación radicalmente distinta, sino una historia diferente.

Con esta historia, Kaija Saariaho crea una obra impactante.La música está siempre al servicio del drama, desde la inquietante obertura, que nos pone en situación para lo que vamos a ver.

As Vitter suggested, this is an opera in which both main characters are constantly shadowed by dreams of alternative lives they might lead: first with one another, in Paris;then the rural fantasy evoked by Des Grieux in “En fermant les yeux”;

Musically Jörg Widmann’s Babylon was rarely less than fascinating.Mr Widmann often conveys the sense of a musical omnivore who has consumed and internalised the major developments of the past three centuries and can deploy an astounding variety of styles and genres at will.

By adding a second production to their roster, the Staatsoper had the opportunity to pair Mr Everding’s crowd-pleasing traditionalism with something darker, stranger, more abstract, and more challenging.

Staatsoper Unter den Linden.Wagner: Tristan und Isolde.Dmitri Tcherniakov, director.Andreas Schager (Tristan), Anja Kampe (Isolde), Ekaterina Gubanova (Brangäne), Boaz Daniel (Kurwenal), Stephen Milling (King Marke), Stephan Rügamer (Melot), Adam Kutny (Steuermann), Linard Vrielink (Young Sailor / Shepherd), Kristin Becker and Mike Hoffmann (Tristan’s Parents).

Directed by Achim Freyer, the production avoided the opera’s saccharine tendencies, instead offering a direct line to the primal terrors that many adults may still remember from childhood.Its grotesqueries were balanced by a light touch and a level of stylisation that kept everything just unreal enough.

Early in the first part of Aribert Reimann’s Medea there is a scene in which Jason and Medea are waiting outside the walls of Corinth hoping to find refuge at the palace of King Creon.