“It was wanderlust, pure and simple, yet it had come upon him like a seizure and grown into a passion …” And so Thomas Mann’s protagonist, the writer Gustav von Aschenbach, heads to Venice. This co-production of Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice premiered in 2017, and was directed and choreographed by the up-and-comer Demis Volpi, who’s just been named the new artistic director and chief choreographer of the Ballett am Rhein. —L.J.