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La Scala presents a new production of Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece, with an excellent cast led by tenor Brandon Jovanovich.

Making her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, the wife of Met GM Peter Gelb crushes any talk of nepotism at the downbeat. 

A strong cast and a masterclass in Wagnerian conducting from Jakub Hrůša complement David Alden’s disturbing staging.

The Norwegian soprano is acclaimed at the Met in Richard Strauss' mash-up of commedia dell'arte and tragic opera. 

Daniel Barenboim conducts an underwhelming cast in the Staatsoper's new Samson et Dalila, and Argentinian director Damián Szifron's operatic debut is stale and cliché-ridden. 

Exceptional singing, an auspicious conducting debut and a staging that is both sophisticated and emotionally involving make this production an unequivocal winner.

Both vocally and instrumentally the performance  was a high-class one

Tcherniakov reduces Berlioz' epic to little more than Circle Time therapy, a poor way to mark the composer's anniversary year.

Mariss Jansons and the Vienna Philharmonic do the real storytelling as Hans Neuenfels' staging underwhelms.

San Francisco Opera's Die Walküre overcame a disappointing first act, winning the audience over with excellent singing and playing and impressive stage effects.

At San Francisco Opera, conductor Donald Runnicles and a top-notch cast deliver a delicious Rheingold in Francesca Zambello's colorful production.

The Royal Opera Orchestra produce a revelatory reading of Shostakovich’s eclectic score; a fine performance from Eva-Maria Westbroek and excellent acting from the whole cast light up the drama and farce.

David Pountney's new production of Die Walküre for the Lyric Opera of Chicago incisively charts the tectonic shift of control over the future from Wotan to Brünnhilde.

Sir Mark Elder's 70th birthday Gurre-Lieder threatens to dislodge the roof in Manchester with the combined forces of the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic

The Metropolitan Opera's new produdtion of Rusalka fails to explore a deeper complexity of the fairy tale, although a strong ensemble of singers and the superb Met Orchestra make it a musically compelling performance.

This production, directed by Tim Albery and with sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel, boasts more than one megastar.

Vienna State Opera's traditional production of Carmen managed to create an evening of both sumptious music and exciting drama on stage.

This performance marked Sir Mark Elder’s debut with the company and, beginning with the overture, he offered his individual interpretation of the score. He had an enormous range of dynamics and his tempi varied widely with the emotional values of each scene.

The plot revolves around the daily life of a simple German town. But this fine production will make you glad that this is not your story.

David Pountney's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger travels to Chicago. 

There aren’t too many more ambitious pieces of music one could choose to celebrate a birthday than Beethoven's Missa solemnis.

The Met's revival of Shostakovich's satirical opera of an oppressed Russian housewife's tragedy is a must-see event of the season.

San Francisco Opera's thoughtful version of the 1955 opera Susannah, one of the most performed American operas, placing the story of Susannah and the Elders in the Appalachian hills of the 1930s. 

Ana María Martínez takes on the title role as Dvořák’s nymph Rusalka in a new Lyric Opera production by David McVicar.

Of the “ABCs” of opera (Aida, Bohème, and Carmen), Bizet’s masterpiece is the one that has made the transition to pop culture ubiquity. Surely even the most oblivious of listeners are able to whistle along to the “Habanera” and “Toreador Song”. Furthermore, the melodramatic story of exoticism, lust and rejection is one of the most popular of operatic tales.

It’s Richard Wagner’s bicentennial year, and everyone is getting in on the act. 22 different productions, by one count, of the complete Ring cycle will be seen worldwide, not to mention countless other celebratory evenings put on by sundry ensembles.

Wagner’s Lohengrin was the last work the master completed before settling into a mid-career six-year slump. During this compositional hiatus, he wrote the poems for his Ring operas and ruminated in print on various topics, musical and otherwise, but work on the music dramas essentially ceased.

The gist of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss’ opera-within-an-opera, is this: a demanding patron insists on having his entertainment for a given evening – a burlesque act and an opera – combined into one work, greatly upsetting the archetypal “serious artist” composer of the opera.

Carmen is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world, and with such a variety of interpretations out there it is always difficult to come up with a new one which is simultaneously inventive and effective.