I saw the opera [The Nose] at the Berlin Staatsoper, and that was also an excellent production: both the music and the staging were first-class. But it was sung in Russian. For a German audience... It is my view that an opera should be performed in the language of the audience. If it is put on in Berlin, it should be sung in German, in London it should be in English, and in Paris in French. But there is another view, particulalry prevalent in the United States, which holds that an opera should be sung in the language in which it was written.