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Janáček’s drama of infanticide is delivered at full power by Nina Stemme and Agneta Eichenholz in Annilese Miskimmon’s well-crafted production. The orchestra, however, are just too loud.

Strong singing but a stellar orchestra and staging make for a riveting production at the Kennedy Center. 

Genève s’offre une Carmen qui brûle les planches dans une mise en scène élégante sans en devenir aride.

Francesca Zambello's hip-hop graffiti staging of Aida comes to Seattle. 

Alexandra Deshorties peine à convaincre vocalement, la mise en scène de Jossi Wieler et Sergio Morabito venant par ailleurs crucifier sur l’autel du gris infini l’opéra de Bellini.

A huge revolving grey monolith centre stage dominated a grey floor, grey props and men in grey costumes, all detracting from the gaiety Verdi envisaged as the essence of Falstaff.

Un spectacle magnifique en cette fin de saison à Genève ! Tout y resplendit de noirceur dans cette farce géniale d’un Verdi qui va bientôt nous dire au revoir... Génie !

Une mise en scène magistrale de Christopher Alden centrée autour de l’arbre sacré, sublime la performance d’Elza van den Heever qui interprète Norma pour la première fois. 

Director Johannes Erath sets Wagner's Lohengrin balancing on a knife edge between fantasy and reality in a beautiful, thought-provoking and magnificently sung production.

Nina Stemme's domination of the heaviest dramatic soprano repertoire continues with an outstanding Isolde at the Zurich Opera House, ably assisted by Stephen Gould, Matti Salminen, and other notable performers under John Fiore.

Jüri Reinvere's new operatic adaptation of Ibsen's immortal drama is a decidedly uneven experience, but not without potential.

Despite some staging problems, a Czech rarity gives the National Theater's new opera season a rousing start, with a vibrant score beautifully realized by conductor John Fiore.

The world ended yesterday. Possibly. It probably didn’t, but the facts are still kind of fuzzy.György Ligeti’s only opera, Le grand macabre is a strange piece. The story is straightforward enough: Nekrotzar, a Death-like figure, travels around the world of Breughelland warning its citizens of impending doom – a giant comet will destroy Earth at midnight.

For his fourth production for the new Oslo opera house, Norwegian director Stefan Herheim turned his attention to Richard Strauss’ one-act opera Salome. This production is a co-production with the Salzburg Easter Festival (where this production premièred in 2011) and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Nothing says “Happy Easter” like a bit of alcohol-fuelled murder on the church steps, right? With their new double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the Norwegian National Opera certainly seems to think so!The two productions were done on practically the same sets, albeit with a few differences, which did create a rather wonderful sense of continuity from the fir

The Norwegian Opera and Ballet seems to be developing a thing lately for staging Puccini operas as flashbacks and/or dreams. There is Stefan Herheim’s La bohème from last season, telling the story as part dream, part flashback from the viewpoint of Rodoldo.

The Dresden Semperoper premiered a new production of Fidelio scarcely a month before the fall of East Germany. Much has changed in the intervening decade and a bit, but the Semperoper is still playing the same Fidelio. It doesn't take much knowledge of recent German history to understand why it was a sensation at the time.