Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Rachel Willis-Sørensen

Despite excellent performances from Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Elmina Hasan, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden's new production of Norma lacks a pinch of salt. 

Giacomo Sagripanti’s live wire dynamics and keenly judged tempo choices keep this revival of Verdi's Il trovatore buoyant at Covent Garden. 

Four superstars deliver dramatic moments in this revival of Sir David McVicar’s Goya-inspired staging of Verdi’s melodrama. 

Shawna Lucey's production from San Francisco Opera misses the mark as it premieres to a packed Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. 

A revival of Adrian Noble’s abstract and dark production of Verdi’s Otello fields a strong cast led by Jonas Kaufmann, Ludovic Tézier and Rachel Willis-Sørensen. 

A grand rendition of Verdi’s Don Carlos opens season at the Grand Théâtre de Genève under the inspired baton of Marc Minkowski, in his first encounter with the opera, directed by Lydia Steier. 

Adam Palka shines as the devil in this revival of Frank Castorf's multimedia staging that relocates the work to mid-20th century Paris, around the end of the Algerian War.

Both vocally and instrumentally the performance  was a high-class one

Andris Nelsons leads a moving performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater with the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Festival Chorus. 

Female voices dominate in the vocal cast: Rachel Willis-Sørensen debuts as Leonora and charms the audience; Anna Maria Chiuri has the temperament and rich vocality requested by the role of the gypsy.

A terrific cast takes on the latest revival of Kasper Holten’s video-infused staging of Mozart’s opera buffa.

Strauss' mix of bedroom farce, comedy of manners and bittersweet musing about aging is acted and sung superbly in this revival of Richard Jones' production.

Under elegant leadership of conductor Harry Bicket, the Met's revival of the "Marriage of Figaro" succeeds with a strong ensemble of cast.

Alan Gilbert reaches a pinnacle at the end of his tenure at the New York Philarmonic.

Holten's masonic lodge setting of Meistersinger gets a lot right but is occasionally uneven; Terfel and Hughes Jones are constantly good to listen to.

Released from the incarceration of directorial prison walls, Fidelio can still make a most powerful impact on the concert platform.

Weaknesses in the staging did little to dim the musical pleasure of hearing Sir Mark Elder conduct Weber's masterpiece with OAE forces and an impressvee cast

Mozart’s beauty asserted but never implied, Sir Richard Eyre’s Le nozze di Figaro brings grand complications in bright turns and quick wit.

This performance marked Sir Mark Elder’s debut with the company and, beginning with the overture, he offered his individual interpretation of the score. He had an enormous range of dynamics and his tempi varied widely with the emotional values of each scene.

After a six week hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera's new Le nozze di Figaro has returned, with a new cast and conductor.

Tony Pappano’s recipe for a concert programme: take a 20th century Italian one act opera, follow it with a romantic symphony chopped in half, then throw in a related German aria; play without a break. It may sound like a train wreck in the making, but the result was a triumph.

Mozart wrote 20 operas during his relatively short life, the first being performed in Salzburg in 1767, when the composer was just eleven years old. However, it is Idomeneo, written and premièred when Mozart was the ripe old age of 25, which is usually considered to be his first mature opera.The opera takes place on the island of Crete immediately after the Trojan War.

Monumental in scale and scope, Götterdämmerung is a work to which it is hard to be indifferent. For many, the idea of an evening of fantasy opera lasting nearly seven hours is unimaginable, so uncongenial is the subject material and so great the attention span demanded.

There's no such thing as a perfect comic opera, and I know it's wrong to describe any work of art as perfect. But seeing Mozart and da Ponte's Le Nozze di Figaro last night, I found this a difficult principle to accept: this opera is about as close as you can get.Many operas have a slew of memorable tunes; many have opportunities for singers to show off their qualities.