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For whatever reason Fabio Luisi chose Verdi's Requiem for his inauguration concert with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, it turned out to be an apt and poignant choice.

Tragic love, deceit, retribution... and Plácido Domingo. Despite its darkness, the Wiener Staatsoper's revival of Simon Boccanegra makes for an enjoyable evening. 

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

An icy female ruler, three chaotic cabinet ministers, questionable hand-holding - it could only be Puccini's last opera in a revivial of Serban's gorgeous 1984 production.

Simon Keenlyside returned to the Met after absence and led a delightful cast of Don Giovanni at the Met.

Little mark of Shakespeare's drama or Verdi's passion behind Bartlett Sher's exsanguinated, highly-stylized Otello for The Metropolitan Opera.

The Met's Turandot remains a grand spectacle, worthy of the opera itself, with a cast rightly earnsing the wild ovation it received.

Within Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the darkest corners of the soul are exposed by music, stirred up by the lying, lecherous exploits of the aristocratic scoundrel, Don Giovanni.

The Metropolitan Opera’s five-year old production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann returned to the repertoire with a remarkable undertaking of the title role by Vittorio Grigolo.

The BBC SSO and Ilan Volkov close EIF 2014's contemplations on 'Conflict and Culture' with dark Mills and dramatic Janáček.

Hans von Bülow taunted that Verdi’s Requiem was just another of his operas “in ecclesiastical garb’”. It’s difficult to disagree when dispatched with as much operatic fervour as Antonio Pappano mustered here. 

Last night’s Covent Garden revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra was a study in time slips. On stage, there is the 25 year slip between the end of the prologue, when Simon is named Doge of Genoa, and the dramatic events of Act I. There is the 24 year gap between the disastrous première of the original opera and the triumph of the heavily revised 1881 version.

As you round the corner of Prince Consort Road, you raise your head to catch a glimpse of the tip of the Royal Albert Hall dome. But just as you do…SMACK! You’ve collided with a stranger’s back. Reorienting yourself you realise there’s a queue a mile long, winding down the steps outside the Royal Albert Hall and stretching all the way to bus stop down the road.

Those who like their opera off-kilter will revel in the Metropolitan Opera’s Les Contes d'Hoffmann, an opera in three acts (with prologue and epilogue) by Jacques Offenbach. The Met production was heavily operetta à la Offenbach—risqué, and at times, erotic.