Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Guillaume Tourniaire

Damiano Michieletto's imaginative take on Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann is lavish fun, with star turns from Jessica Pratt, Iván Ayón Rivas and Marko Mimica.

Andrei Kymach and Yuri Kissin deliver standout Australian debuts in a revival of Sir David McVicar's dark, unshrinking Don Giovanni.

A beautiful 17th-century setting does nothing to dim the freshness and relevance of Sir David McVicar's production for Opera Australia.

Massanet’s Don Quichotte is mounted by Opera Australia, in a production which creaks but is held together by fine singing from Ferruccio Furlanetto and Warwick Fyfe.

Outstanding performances from Nicole Car and Etienne Dupuis turn Opera Australia's unstaged production of Thaïs into a triumph at Sydney Town Hall.

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

Beautiful sets and a fine cast led by Guillaume Tourniaire can't quite compensate for the dramatic weaknesses in Opera Australia's new production of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles.

David McVicar's production of Faust enjoys one of the strongest overall performances of Opera Australia in recent times.

One’s upbringing to respect the elderly is challenged in a farcical, not so far-fetched family matter in Opera Australia’s Don Pasquale.

Kasper Holten's innovative production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin comes to Sydney, with Nicole Car outstanding as Tatyana.

In a sense, the plot of Don Pasquale is timeless: it concerns an old man who comes between young lovers and meets his comeuppance.

Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, written some ten years before Carmen, does not enjoy as much recognition as the latter opera. Composed at the age of 25, the opera received harsh criticism from many contemporary critics, although not from Hector Berlioz, who clearly recognised something of Bizet's genius in the work.

In an opera of such popularity as Carmen by Georges Bizet, it wouldn’t be easy to please an audience likely to be inured to a variety of performances of arias such as Habanera and The Toreador’s Song. Yet Opera Australia made a thoughtfully constructed and well vindicated attempt.