Perhaps the film of the original 2013 Aix staging, with the electrifying Evelyn Herlitzius as the protagonist and Chéreau on hand to inspire, will always have prior place as one of the top opera films of all time (it's still available on BelAir).

Loy is a radical re-thinker, usually with startling results, though he tripped up with his recent La forza del destino and I wonder if he could have come close to the organic reinvention of the late, great Patrice Chéreau, whose production came to the Met three years after his untimely death (★★★★★).

These two of the top masterpieces by Wagner's natural successor - 'Richard the Third', as Strauss was dubbed, because there could be no second - both reminded us of what worked and what didn't when Robert Carsen's sort-of-1920s Rosenkavalier came to Covent Garden, and what we're missing next month when we should have been seeing the stupendous Nina Stemme as Elektra in Christof Loy's new Royal Opera production.

There's been real thought behind the wealth of programming in the company's attempts to keep the world happy for free during lockdown, including a whole Wagner week.

Metropolitan opera der rosenkavalier