Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | John Tessier

The thrills of Tudor (pseudo-)history and bel canto expressivity combine in the second of Donizetti's “Three Queens” operas, Maria Stuarda, making its company debut at Seattle Opera.

Despite mostly solid work from soloists and chorus, several ensemble problems and overall stylistic decisions diminished this performance's success.

Uneven musical values mar Seattle Opera's colourful production of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles.

A performance of Wagner’s epic Tristan und Isolde, a testimony for all-enduring love, is a welcome event anywhere in the world. 

It is a myth that pearls can be formed from grit and so it proved here, where a vastly underwhelming musical performance sullied a much improved production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. 

Britten's Spring Symphony and Ryan Wigglesworth's Locke's Theatre join with Rudolf Buchbinder's thrilling account of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody, all conducted, at short notice, by Brett Mitchell, Franz Welser-Möst's assistant.

L’Opéra de Montréal opened its 2013/14 season with a revival of Léo Delibes’ major operatic success, Lakmé. Rarely performed today, the story revolves around a romance between a colonial British officer, Gérald, and a Brahma priestess, Lakmé, in 19th-century India.

In his biography of Richard Wagner, Michael Tanner writes that Tristan und Isolde is one of two great masterpieces that have the musical brilliance, the intellectual strength and the emotional power to convert you to its philosophical cause. The other, naturally, is the St Matthew Passion.

Boston Lyric Opera's production of The Barber of Seville looks, sounds and feels like a storybook come to life. Wildly improbable and completely over the top, the story recounts the antics of Count Almaviva and his quest to win the love of Rosina, freeing her from her vile guardian in the process.

Two years ago, my voice teacher invited to my very first Messiah performance with the Downers Grove Choral Society, of which he was the director. During the three-hour performance, I vividly recall feeling incredibly uplifted in indescribable spiritual bliss for the whole time I spent in the seat, intensely listening to the historically-informed rendition.