Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Krassimira Stoyanova

Stoyanova’s extraordinary performance as the Feldmarschallin made 394th revival of Otto Schenk’s 1968 production of Der Rosenkavalier an occasion to savor.

Katharina Thalbach offers a traditional staging at the Semperoper, with fine vocal performances led by Krassimira Stoyanova, Francesco Meli and Oksana Volkova. 

Riccardo Muti conducted a stirring performance of Verdi's Requiem to mark the 30th anniversary of Karajan's death.

Frederic Wake-Walker sticks to a vapid pop-parody that demeans the intellectual message of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.

Christian Thielemann led a memorable performance of Strauss's chamber opera Ariadne auf Naxos with a strong cast in a new straightforward production by David Hermann.

You feel you ought not to approve of such directorial extravagance, but catch yourself being drawn into the grand pageant. 

If Chung is sometimes hailed as the greatest living conductor of Verdi, here was a performance to support that claim.

The Met Opera's concert performance of Verdi's Requiem was an emotional tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 

The Metropolitan Opera’s now 29-year old production of Aida is still standing and still looking good. Gianni Quaranta’s gigantic sets – floor-to-sky-statuary, regal-looking staircases, a couple of horses, wise/exciting use of the stage elevator to change scenes (causing, unfortunately, a glitch the other night which delayed the final scene for a few minutes), costumes (by Dada Saligeri) mostly of

Were it not for a sterling musical display, built on the shoulders of bass Ferruccio Furlanetto and conductor Myung-whun Chung, this could have been a very long night indeed.

Christian Spuck’s new ballet Messa da Requiem in Zurich, is a breathtakingly powerful achievement. But its profound impact is spurred by more than dance alone.

A lacklustre season opening at Teatro Real proves once again the elusive nature of Verdi's masterpiece.

Strauss' penultimate opera is treated to a lavish if superficial staging at the Salzburg Festival, but the real rewards come from the musical performance of this unjustly neglected work.

Mehta's refusal to treat these as episodic statements gave the playing its polish. The music unravelled in a spun-out yarn.

Furlanetto and Domingo give their all in leading a starry cast, but the stage direction fails to ignite.

Both the music and the plot are heavily revised in Nunes' imagining of Rossini's final opera. But great performances and a coherent concept earned this unusual production a well-deserved standing ovation.

Harry Kupfer updates the action of Der Rosenkavalier to the early 20th century in an evocative production for the Salzburg Festival.

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.

Thunderous applause, numerous curtain calls; Stoyanova, Bĕlohlávek and a strong cast enjoy a fairy-tale reception in Sven-Bechtolf´s new production of Dvorak's Rusalka at the Vienna Staatsoper.

Apart from the precious Quattro pezzi sacri, Verdi wrote very little sacred music until this Requiem, probably due to his agnosticism. When Alessandro Manzoni, one of the most important and admired Italian literary figures, died on the 22nd of May 1873, Verdi felt that something in the Italian cultural world had come to an end.

Every once in a while, I hear a concert that grips me from the first note and doesn’t let go until the very last. Daniele Gatti and the Philharmonia’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall was such a concert.There are some caveats to make: I’m not catholic, I’m not very religious and I’m not particularly steeped in the tradition of liturgical music.

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.

A new production of Ariadne auf Naxos is a major draw in itself, but a queue for standing room whose end is on the other side of the opera house is news even in Vienna, especially when the performance is not the première, but the fourth in a run of five and also the one that Franz Welser-Möst left to Jeffrey Tate, who has conducted the piece to positive reviews before.

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.