Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Pavol Breslik

Asmik Grigorian leads a searing performance in Martin Kušej’s 15-year-old, yet ever-fresh, outstanding production of Dvořák's opera.

Director Lotte De Beer's thoroughly realized, aesthetically rich and beautifully executed production of Janáček's masterpiece is anchored by strong performances from Nina Stemme and Svetlana Aksenova.

Pavol Breslik had no difficulties in rendering the intricacies of Janáček’s vocal language, shaped by Moravian folk music and speech patterns.

Kálmán's operetta brilliantly updated to the super-rich of today, with starry singing from Annette Dasch and Pavol Breslik.

With fabulous solo singing from Pavol Breslik and Elsa Dreisig, Beethoven's only oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives turns out to be a gem. Sadly, the Berg Violin Concerto misses the mark.

Barenboim conducts Otto Nicolai's Falstaff opera with a warmth and affection that is sorely lacking on stage. 

What brought real distinction and authenticity to the evening, as so often in this house, was the outstanding playing of the Staatskapelle conducted by Tomaš Netopil. From the start of the overture with its rapidly scurrying fugato for strings and pointed phrasing from the woodwind one felt the true sense of Smetana’s Czech inflected rhythms and harmonies

Petrenko's Puccini is bracingly alert, filled with colour and has a romantic sweep that is utterly transporting.

A terrific cast takes on the latest revival of Kasper Holten’s video-infused staging of Mozart’s opera buffa.

Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is perhaps most famous for a single and highly emotional scene in which two monarchs engage in a venomous confrontation. One is doomed to die. 

Barrie Kosky’s clever direction enlivens a Strauss rarity at the Bayerische Staatsoper but the minimalist stage setting sinks HMS Schweigsame Frau.

Barrie Kosky’s atypically conservative production of the Russian classic was marked by musical direction and vocal performances of the highest order.

Jean-François Sivadier's pulsating new production propels The Don through his lusty adventures at a whirlwind pace. 

Thomas Hengelbrock and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra open Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie concert-hall with a traversal of music through the ages, from a Renaissance motet to Wolfgang Rihm's latest work.

In David Hermann's new production, confusion reigns, but the performance is saved by the singing. 

In the ballad, a lovelorn maiden is finally reunited with her dead lover, who immediately tries to trick her into a midnight wedding at a graveyard after dragging her through muddy swamps filled with ghosts and howling animals. 

Barrie Kosky’s new Macbeth is devoid of riff-raff, shrill costumes and anything trivial. Instead, it’s a feast for the imagination, a case for modern opera at its very best. 

Beautiful sets and a fine cast led by Guillaume Tourniaire can't quite compensate for the dramatic weaknesses in Opera Australia's new production of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles.

An unsympathetic production of La traviata fails to impress at the Staatsoper. 

Donizetti’s magic potion was much more Bollinger bubbles than bad Bordeaux.  It was delightful, delicious and de-lovely.

Both the staging and the music of the Bayerische Staatsoper's Traviata disappoint.

Zurich's The Turn of the Screw is a masterful staging of the Benjamin Britten's musical narrative of Henry James' ghost story. 

67-year-old diva Edita Gruberova presents a devastating portrayal of a desperate mother supported by a strong cast in a stark modern production.

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is one of the most beautiful scores in the operatic repertoire, and I don’t blame people who come to it looking forward to immersing themselves in the warm bath of the familiar story and music.

Otello is usually considered to be Verdi’s most mature opera. It was one of the last ones he wrote, the result of a plot by his publisher Riccordi and the conductor Franco Faccio to draw him out of early retirement. The result is a work which combines all the aspects of Verdi’s earlier operatic style with Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk.

It's the most spectacular entrance in opera: the giant stone statue bursts in to join Don Giovanni at the dinner table; a pair of sweeping downward octave swoops in D minor fills the audience (and the hapless Leporello) with terror at the rake's imminent descent into hell.OK, that was a spoiler, but then we all know the story: a production of Don Giovanni is all about how you tell it.