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Just as Mladek has a taste for the surreal (he recently directed Michael Nyman's The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat), so Innsbruck has a knack of delivering not just the fey Shakespearian (as part of an ongoing Shakespeare theme, the theatre's intendant, the mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender, next season directs Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream) but lighter and comic fare : The Count of Luxembourg, Kiss me Kate and Hello Dolly! are all on the coming year's agenda.

Innsbruck traditionally includes one semi-staged (and hence cheaper) opera during its annual season, which also embraces dance, theatre and children's stagings. This year, contuing the Shakespeare lineage, Fassbaender oversaw a cheerful and simple semistaging of Salieri's 1799 comic opera Falstaff (or Le tre burle -- 'The Three Japes'), a work which would well merit a complete staging (which it receives, as it happens, from Opera Tourcoing in Belgium this week).

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