Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Goran Jurić

Olavinlinna, also known as St Olaf's Castle, provides an atmospheric setting for Verdi's take on Shakespeare's “Scottish play”. 

Norma is presented in its original two-soprano version, in the new critical edition by musicologist Roger Parker. 

Andris Nelsons brings his Shostakovich project to a close in Boston with an incandescent performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. 

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

Actors double up with singers in Hans Neuenfels' innovative production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Vienna. 

In Emma Dante's staging we are viewing an allegory of death as painted in the medieval frescoes of Italian cemeteries.

The Russian director's role play production of Prokofiev's comedy falls flat at the Staatsoper.

Many scenes could risk to be particularly disturbing,  but their overt brutality appeared functional, to the structure of the drama. A dark, gloomy story as unambiguously told as it should be.

Michieletto's production for the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome is fresh, intelligent and destined to go down as one of his best. 

Christian Gerhaher’s experience in a role he knows well rescued an evening of mitigated pleasures.

Harry Kupfer's vivid and enlightening production came alive by soprano Anja Kampe's courageous performance and by conductor Oksana Lyniv's briliant direction.

Better conducting and supertitles would also help breathe life into this drab revival of Bayerische Staatsoper's Don Carlo.

Adrianne Pieczonka and Anett Fritsch shone in an otherwise disappointing opening night, impaired by poor conducting and unimpressive staging.

Christof Loy's modern-dress production of Donizetti's Roberto Devereux for the Bayerische Staatsoper is deliciously, darkly ironic. A dream cast handles the dramatic and musical challenges well, though the voice of the star sounds worn for this star vehicle.

The Merry Wives of Windsor – relocated to Scotland – sing beautifully, as does their wooer, Falstaff. But it's not clear why they're in Scotland in the first place, or how the rest of the staging fits the opera.

Nothing will make the plot of Il trovatore less ridiculous. But a director who embraces that ridiculousness, plus stellar playing and singing, make for a great show.

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.

67-year-old diva Edita Gruberova presents a devastating portrayal of a desperate mother supported by a strong cast in a stark modern production.

Good versus evil, only evil wins. Wagner's Lohengrin fills the Madrid night with questions about what trust is and what it takes to maintain it.

In Tosca there's a real sense of Puccini being at home. Written shortly after La Bohème, when he was right at the height of his powers, Tosca is a story of love, jealousy and political turmoil, taking place in Rome, the same city in which it was premiered.

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.

Beethoven took over nine years to write and edit Fidelio, his only opera. It tells the story of Leonore, whose husband Florestan is being illegally held in prison. She disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison in an attempt to save him.