At a time when most opera houses and festivals are retrenching financially and artistically, Austria's Bregenz Festival is bucking the trend. The centrepiece of this year's ambitious festival is a thrilling new production of Verdi's Aida on the Lake Stage, which is reported to have cost £10 million. Such a budget can work here, where audiences of 7,000 gather nightly on the corner of Lake Constance, where Austria meets Germany and Switzerland.
