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Massenet’s take on Goethe’s blockbuster novella of unrequited love and suicide is handled with great subtlety by Christof Loy and Marc Leroy-Calatayud. Benjamin Bernheim and Marina Viotti lead a starry vocal cast.

Excellent performances and stage direction make a good case for an opera that's on the slow side dramatically.

An oriental sweetmeat from the pen of Henri Rabaud, based on a tale from The Arabian Nights, is revived triumphantly in Paris. 

A delightful performance of Rameau's opera opens the Müpa's Early Music Festival.

The third opera of the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy opens the opera festival in Drottningholm, the "Swedish Versailles", with a good cast beautifully conducted by Marc Minkowski.

Despite being a little rough and ready at times, the Rodolfus Choir and superb Philharmonia captured a moving sense of stillness in these two popular works

The Philharmonia's City of Light season goes from strength to strength with an outstanding performance of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges and Dutilleux's Correspondances.

Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, calls for a spring in a forest, scenes in a palace, a well in a park and a scene in the palace vaults. Ever since its premiere in 1902, it has been a difficult work to stage, and indeed to appreciate. Its complex symbolism, impressionistic music and lack of any memorable melodies were not a good recipe for a runaway hit.