Fest Best: EIF opera

Semiramide

Uncomfortable watching for our politicians and power-brokers, but thoroughly exhilarating listening for pretty much everyone else: Rossini's final Italian opera comes as a challenge to those dismissive of his ability to organise large musical structures with subtlety and dramatic force. It's also a superb opportunity to watch Alberto Zedda conduct the man whose music he has made his life's work.

Die Frau ohne Schatten

A 164 piece orchestra; five hugely demanding solo roles; extraordinary staging requirements. Strauss' opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten [the woman without a shadow] is nothing if not epic in its scale and ambition. Few better maestros to take it on, then, than the powerhouse of Russian performance, Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Opera. A Scottish premiere for a score which is both technically demanding and deeply affective.

Thaïs

The famous and intriguing entr'acte, 'Méditation', hidden in act two of Massanet's Egyptian-set opera comes as a sea of calm in an otherwise fairly troubling tale. An extraordinary melodist and orchestrator, Massanet writes brilliantly towards a death which comes as tragedy to all but the titular Thaïs herself. Thaïs is perhaps best known for the virtuoso demands it places on the singer in the title role. Soprano Erin Wall may well make it look easy.