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Peter Kellner and Slávka Zámečníková's charming duo anchors this revival of Barrie Kosky's high spirited production.

Dutch National Opera's superbly sang Così fan tutte is transposed into a teenager summer crush story.

After nearly two decades away from the Covent Garden stage, it was time Britten's Billy Budd came home, in a new production from Madrid by Deborah Warner. 

Kaija Saariaho's delightful but unchallenging fourth opera comes to Madrid with the same crew of the world première and Davone Tines, Philippe Jaroussky and Nora Kimball-Mentzos in the leading roles

Axel Ranisch's production makes heavy use of film to tell a comic story of a medieval knight in love.

Ivor Bolton and David McVicar have teamed up to create an unapologetically Brittenian Gloriana, with Anna Caterina Antonacci at the top of a great cast

Virtuoso modern stagecraft and a fine cast combine in a very enjoyable, present-day Rake’s Progress.

The Teatro Real opened its 200th anniversary season with a revival of Claus Guth's brilliant production and a great cast, led by Kurt Streit and Silvia Tro Santafé.

Billy Budd triumphs in Madrid thanks to an inspired orchestra, a solid cast and a dream team of stage magicians.

Concerto Köln, honed to perfection, and an accomplished cast star in Claus Guth's tense, dark staging of Handel's Jephtha. 

The singing is the main attraction in Dutch National Opera’s Le nozze di Figaro, but this new production is also entertaining and looks good enough to eat.

Kasper Holten's new production fails to convince about the alleged virtues of Wagner's outcast comic opera.

Leah Hausman's revival of David McVicar's production allows the comedy to stem from the situations set up by Mozart and da Ponte... aided by Erwin Schrott's witty Figaro.

With the help of a star-studded cast, Barrie Kosky's imaginative staging delivers a production of Handel's Saul which has just about everything going for it: choreography, voices, acting. A must-see.

In this minimalist period production of Figaro, the singing and acting are the centre of attention. A very talented cast carries the show, delivering beautiful singing and engaging comedy.

Claus Guth gives the Staatsoper Berlin a Turn of the Screw unlike any other.

A classical setting and a varying degree of vocal and dramatic success for Mozart's miraculous score to Le nozze di Figaro.

With this new production of Gluck's Alceste in Madrid, Krzysztof Warlikowski uses a well known popular icon to drag the audience into a two-way process of dramatic exploration.

After Cavalli’s Ercole Amante in 2009 and Handel’s Deidamia in 2011, De Nederlandse Opera is continuing its exploration of obscure Baroque operas with Gluck’s Armide, until 27 October.I always wondered why Armide was Gluck’s own favourite work.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder are not performed often, and one reason involves simple logistics. Not only is a professional orchestra of gigantic proportions required, but also five soloists with Wagnerian voices, a narrator, an eight-part mixed chorus, three four-part male choirs, and a conductor crazy enough to try to keep some 400 musicians from going off the rails.

Entering a standing-room-only hall on Tuesday evening in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Leonidas Kavakos calmly made his way to center stage, hugged the concert master, smiled at the orchestra and then cued the beginning of Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 3 in G major, which he both played and conducted.

The great jazz composer Bob Brookmeyer used to instruct his students that they should never write a solo section in their composition until it was absolutely inevitable that a solo should take place.

Alceste is the short and sombre story of a wife who gives her life to save that of her husband, King Admète of Thessaly, a deed which ultimately convinces the gods to reprieve both of them. Gluck, hoping to avoid the over-decorated vocal style then in vogue, set this plot to unadorned vocal lines to give depth to the underlying emotions.

The Wiener Symphoniker has suffered recently from more late conductor cancellations than most orchestras, and things reached a peak last season when their chief conductor Fabio Luisi pulled out of a string of engagements in order to substitute for James Levine at the Met.

The last production I saw of L’Orfeo explored the idea of music as a manipulative force, suggesting disturbing consequences to the docility it can engender. Director Claus Guth is less concerned with Orfeo the musician, and makes minimal acknowledgement of the work’s pastoral and mythic elements.