Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Marie Lenormand

The opera can be summed up by a line sung by the Countess in Act 4: “You’re killing her with all this noise.”

The opera parody Atys en Folie created for the Valletta International Baroque festival is an interesting historical curiosity, but the genre's very specific brand of humour doesn't appeal to everyone.

Cologne Opera's staging of Ravel's two comedies needed a stronger directorial response to the performance space, but the musical rewards compensated.

A traditionally staged Le Pré aux clercs fresh from Paris' Opéra Comique is presented with colour and joie de vivre.

Henri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is.

It was a glass-smashing, balloon-popping, bearskin-wearing, strip-out-of-your-swimsuit-onstage kind of afternoon at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater for the opening of New York City Opera’s second production of the 2012 season, Mozart’s Così fan tutte.Even for people who’ve seen this opera before, I’ll bet they’ve never seen a Così like this one.