Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Stephanie Blythe

The compelling story of boxer Emile Griffith's struggles with guilt and sexuality are not ideally rendered in James Robinson's new production.

Andris Nelsons finishes his 2019 Tanglewood residency on a high note.

All three operas in Puccini's triptych are strongly cast in this revival. 

Laurent Pelly’s staging provided some of the most memorable moments in this performance of Cendrillon. 

With Andris Nelsons' withdrawal from Bayreuth last year, the BSO’s summer home, Tanglewood, became the venue for his Wagner with a concert performance of Das Rheingold

Dido and Aeneas was triumphant and had all those great moments that make Morris’s choreography among the most musical I’ve seen.

San Francisco Opera's production of Sweeney Todd brings nothing new to the musical, but the cast includes wonderful surprises – most notably Stephanie Blythe's Mrs Lovett.

Romance and Treachery in a Grand Season Finale for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

With a witty and adventurous program and dazzling performances of each song, Stephanie Blythe and Warren Jones did not disappoint.

A bearded lady and her taxidermied shark are just two eccentric characters livening up Stravinsky’s 1951 moral fable The Rake’s Progress, though the shark is unique to Jonathan Miller’s revived production. 

Handel's sensual tragicomedy comes to dazzling life in Seattle Opera's first-ever staging of Semele, a new production directed by Tomer Zvulun.

The Il trovatore on offer at the Lyric this month would make a fine CD, its vocal strengths to be found equally among the leading foursome, but its weaknesses are visual and dramaturgical, and these are plenty too.

Love and death, jealousy and revenge, assassination and intrigue, culminating in a dazzle of song, dance, and a shower of sparkling gold: San Diego's A Masked Ball has it all.

Like Falstaff, I found myself attempting to gobble up as much as I could: the amusing story, Robert Carsen's resourceful directing, and the brilliant music. In addition to the strong instrumental performing, the singing was, on the whole, delightful.

Stephanie Blythe appeared in recital with Les Violons du Roy Saturday evening at the Maison Symphonique de Montréal, the second stop in a seven-city tour that the renowned mezzo-soprano is taking with the ensemble this fall. Blythe performed Haydn’s infrequently heard cantata Arianna a Naxos and favorite arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare.

Wagner famously idealized the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art that incorporates many artistic media into a single piece. He would have appreciated Seattle Opera’s production of Götterdämmerung.

After Sunday night’s breathtaking Das Rheingold, it was difficult to imagine Die Walküre could be more beautiful or committed. Seattle Opera outdid themselves with this second installment of the Ring cycle, which featured energetic playing and singing, gorgeous stage pictures, and devastatingly believable acting from all of the singers.

Some Ring cycles are based on ideological concepts; Seattle Opera’s current Ring cycle is based on a place. That place is the Pacific Northwest of the United States, home to such extraordinary natural beauty that stage director Stephen Wadsworth has deemed it fit for the gods.

In last night’s performance of Die Walküre at the Met, Martina Serafin as Sieglinde and Simon O’Neill as Siegmund drew us completely into the process of two people falling into illicit love.

Quite simply, it’s the largest scale event in all of opera. With 18 hours of music in a 3,800 seat house, Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met is a giant, lavish undertaking – all starting with that famous E flat chord: starting from the quietest of pianissimo double bass notes and building for nearly four minutes before it explodes into the melody of the Rhinemaidens.

Read our review of David Alden’s production of Verdi­'s Un Ballo in Maschera in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York. 

Read our review of Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda by Handel, in its 2011 HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Handel, two cracking counter-tenors and Renée Fleming were all the excuses needed for a long-overdue trip to New York to hear Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda - the very piece which revived interest in Handel's opera following its performance in Göttingen in the 1920s.

Read our review of Robert Lepage's production of Wagner's Die Walküre in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

“Off with their heads!” I vividly recall being terrorized as a preschooler hearing Walt Disney’s sadistic, loud-mouthed Queen of Hearts thunder these signature lines. I have since learned that decapitation as capital punishment is not exclusive to the fictional Queen of Hearts of Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, but rather grim historical reality.

“Hate breeds hate.” I cannot possibly count all the times that I have heard this alarmingly true statement during my entire lifetime be it from my parents, mentors, or other individuals that I have encoutered. Indeed, this statement has proven too true countless times throughout the history of mankind, becoming a perennial favorite theme for artistic works ranging from novels to plays.

Read our review of Robert Lepage's production of Das Rheingold by Wagner, in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

In spite of Mahler's disapproval, his eighth symphony is forever tagged as the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the immense choirs which perform it.

Read our review of Mark Morris' production of Gluck­'s Orfeo ed Euridice in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.