Festival Productions in Bregenz, Munich, Bayreuth, and Salzburg

Alfons's shops have devised an ingenious vision-designed by Tom Pye-which involves only two major set-pieces. [...]the Royal Opera has a handsome, stripped-down production ready to go. [...]instead of being discovered in some charming eighteenth century Italian locale-the two couples are imprisoned in a stark white box with all doors locked. [...]in this novel production, at the close, the Commendatore is busy digging a grave for that unrepentant sinner Don Giovanni rather than pull him down into the flames of hell with him. [...]Nicolas Stemann's postmodernist production of Faust, Parts One and Two in this year's festival was not played in Salzburg, but in the Salt Drying Hall at Hallein, site of some of the area's richest historic salt mines.