By George Loomis [Financial Times, 26 May 2008]

Alarmed by the threat of Dionysian rites in his kingdom, Pentheus, the ill-fated king of Thebes, personally investigates in disguise. In Christof Loy’s tense new production of Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids for the Bayerische Staatsoper, Pentheus finds himself centre-stage amid the cultish practices, women lined up on one side of him, men on the other.