By Shirley Apthorp [Financial Times, 22 December 2010]

Rape, murder, raw alcohol - nihilistic Catalan stage director Calixto Bieito’s signature tropes are his stock-in-trade. But how would he work them into Beethoven’s Fidelio? In the lead-up to his debut at the Bavarian State Opera, the Munich press predicted storms of boos even before the event.