Tomorrow night Wiener Staatsoper chief Dominique Meyer will be speaking at the Rathaus. His topic is “Die Einzigartigkeit der Wiener Staatsoper in der gegenwärtigen Opernwelt,”or, “The Singularity of the Wiener Staatsoper in Today’s Operatic World.”* 7:00 in the Festsaal, free. I’ll be there and will report if anything particularly interesting or outrageous is related. The description makes it sound insufferably smug already, so I may grab a seat near the door.

One question: when is the next season going to be announced? I heard a report that it wasn’t going to be until around April 20, which is quite late, but that may be wrong. (Update: Twitterer @Goldie_Vienna tells me it is going to be April 12.) Expect a new production of La Traviata with Natalie Dessay, directed by Jean-François Sivadier (co-production with Aix, premiering there this summer), Anna Netrebko as Tatiana and the Figaro Countess (both revivals), a new Don Carlo with Krassimira Stoyanova and Piotr Beczala, probably a new From the House of the Dead directed by Peter Konwitschny (co-production with Zürich, premiering there in June) and a revival of Der Rosenkavalier with Anja Harteros. The David McVicar Adriana Lecouvreur, already seen in London, is coming, but that could be further off in the future. That’s all I got, though I can guess that our friends Barbiere, Elisir, Zauberflöte and so on aren’t going to be going away.

*Nowhere else do so many wonderful artists come together and produce so many wildly unpredictable and often mediocre performances! Well, that might not be quite what he will say.