Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Christof Fischesser

Asmik Grigorian leads a searing performance in Martin Kušej’s 15-year-old, yet ever-fresh, outstanding production of Dvořák's opera.

After its Met Opera debut earlier in the year, Simon McBurney's popular staging returns to Amsterdam. 

Jan Philipp Gloger's production returns to Amsterdam with a superb cast led by Maria Bengtsson and Angela Brower. 

A stellar production of Die Walküre premieres in Zurich, not far from the location where Richard Wagner composed it. 

The Bayerische Staatsoper's revival of a controversial production containing Georg Baselitz’s artwork succeeds with strong musical performances led by veterans of Wagnerian operas.

The Bavarian State Opera avoids the routine in a powerfully cast revival of Richard Jones' building-site production of Lohengrin.

Peter Seiffert can still impress as Tristan, but Graham Vick's staging is uncertain and unconvincing. 

Musically, a rewarding Forza, but Homoki's staging is best forgotten.

Claus Guth’s grandiose production of Parsifal made major headlines in Zurich in 2011. With its new cast of principals, this revival is no less a sensation.

Celebrating a courageous woman who is able to secure the release of her husband from prison, Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio has music that is more compelling that its plot.

Barrie Kosky’s atypically conservative production of the Russian classic was marked by musical direction and vocal performances of the highest order.

Setting the opera in the backyard of a suburban house feels refreshingly honest: the ridiculous and simplistic tale of the evil witch, the prince and the maiden is rightfully returned to the arena of children's games, and adults look on indulgently, with a wink.

Detlev Glanert's first religious composition, a staggering Requiem for solo voices, two choirs and orchestra, pits the demonic against the angelic, and is worthy of the genius it celebrates.

A feast for the eyes in Zurich, but is the visual stimulation in Herbert Fritsch's production of Der Freischütz just too much?

At the Bayerische Staatsoper, director Andreas Kriegenberg's concept for Siegfried works well, but the cast members aren't all up to the opera's challenges.

Kriegenburg's staging of Wagner's Ring cycle begins with a visually appealing but intellectually empty Rheingold.

Die Zauberflöte may well tell us something about the Human Condition, but its staging in Zurich serves more to distract from the music and the messages than it does to support them.

In a new production of Wagner's Lohengrin, conductor Simone Young and stage director Andreas Homoki, along with an extraordinary cast, engineered a superb performance.

German director Christof Loy’s second production for the Royal Swedish opera was of Wagner’s Parsifal. The cast is rather on the luxurious side as well, sporting three of the greatest Wagner singers working today – two of them Swedish, no less!Loy’s Parsifal is a distinctly human drama.

My last opera of the year was also my first Wagner: a new Covent Garden production of Tannhäuser, directed by Tim Albery and conducted by Semyon Bychkov.First things first: Bychkov was magnificent.