Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Rinat Shaham

Here was the much-loved three-act opera Rigoletto, yes, but chances are, it was one far beyond Verdi’s wildest dreams.

A thrilling concert by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain conducted by Sir Mark Elder culminated in a sinister and atmospheric performance of Duke Bluebeard's Castle.

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

To open the new year, Seattle Symphony music director Ludovic Morlot chose a standard work, Beethoven’s Ninth, prefaced with an unusual one by French composer Olivier Messaien. 

Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera is – for him – a tame affair. 

Destiny, Fate, Providence: different ways of describing the sense of an external agency shaping our ends. Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, based on a Spanish play by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, is a sprawling tale in which the characters’ lives are irrevocably shaped by a fatal accident.

There can be fewer more idyllic places in the world to see an opera. Behind the floating stage was Sydney’s harbour bridge and opera house; to the left, the lights of the central business district; and to the right, the glittering lights of the Northern Shore and the occasional ferry making its way to Circular Quay.

Some operagoers contend that Carmen, the fatalistic gypsy doomed to die, is unlikable. She antagonizes other women at the cigarette factory. She seduces men with abandon. She makes an inexperienced corporal of the guard fall for her, manipulates him into abandoning his military career for a life of smuggling, and then heartlessly turns him out like a pesky stray.

In an opera of such popularity as Carmen by Georges Bizet, it wouldn’t be easy to please an audience likely to be inured to a variety of performances of arias such as Habanera and The Toreador’s Song. Yet Opera Australia made a thoughtfully constructed and well vindicated attempt.