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For La Scala’s prima, outstanding vocal performances light up a busy but interesting staging of Verdi’s revenge opera by Leo Muscato.

Lluís Pasqual's production falls short of expectations, despite featuring a cast of opera stars led by the exceptional Anna Netrebko under the meticulous direction of Riccardo Chailly.

Riccardo Chailly conducts a wonderful, integral performance of Donizetti’s masterpiece, with two of the greatest bel canto singers of our times.

Chailly's energy and vitality is inspirational on his return to Amsterdam for an all-Rachmaninov concert. 

Ildar Abdrazakov and Ain Anger excel in the confrontation of tsar and historian; Kaspar Holten's safe but effective staging focuses on the relentless march of history.

Riccardo Chailly gives a masterful rendition of Rossini’s masterpiece, leading a solid cast in an inspired performance, in Leo Muscato’s new staging. 

The Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro alla Scala excel in a thrilling concert conducted by Riccardo Chailly with a magnificent contribution from soprano Lise Davidsen.

Weill and Brecht's excoriating satire is brilliantly executed; after such an intense opener, Mahagonny-Songspiel is less convincing.

Riccardo Chailly leads a splendid cast in Verdi’s masterpiece as La Scala leads the way in these troubled times, when the opera world is so volatile and fragile, by focusing on the music, holding onto artistic values. 

"Beethoven 250" starts in grand form with thrilling performances of Egmont and Symphonies 5 and 8 in Antwerp.

Anna Netrebko chews the scenery as Floria Tosca… and there’s a lot of it to get her teeth into in David Livermore’s busy staging in Milan.

This lightweight, combustive account lacked bluster, sourcing tension from its forward momentum.

In an all-Rachmaninov evening, Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra open the 2019 festival with a brilliant exploration of the relation of music to power.

Outstanding vocal and orchestral performances light up La Scala's season opener, matched to a conservative but visually arresting staging from Davide Livermore.

Fail to inject the composer's cathedral-sized symphonic structures with a sense of rapt wonder and they can sound dull.

Works by Stravinsky and Mozart launched this year’s Lucerne Festival, whose theme is “Childhood”.

Director Davide Livermore sets the story at the time of the Dolce Vita, including the motorbike from the film Roman Holiday and the roadster from The Easy Life.

The Filarmonica did not play with the polished sheen for which it is often known, but let the raw power of the music speak on its own terms. The results were utterly captivating.

A truly magnificent evening from Chailly and his Milanese orchestra.

The big season opener at La Scala offers few surprises in a traditional staging, although Yusif Eyvazov proved his worth in the title role. 

A sizeable contingent of curious musicologists and critics gathered for the Milan première. It was a gifted a performance with plenty of insights to offer.

Chailly is beefing up the orchestra's sound and honing its style through an intensive collaboration that has borne tours, recording projects and frequent appearances in Milan.

Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica della Scala give a wonderful account of two of Respighi's travelogues; Leonidas Kavakos plays Brahms with refinement – perhaps too much so for the Albert Hall.

Conductor Riccardo Chailly launched this year's Lucerne Festival with a riveting programme of three late 19th century works by the great orchestral explorer, Richard Strauss.

If Chailly’s recent Beethoven’s Seventh was notable for its originality, particularly for the conductor's choice of tempi, here he opted for a straighter reading free of idiosyncrasy.

La gazza ladra celebrates its 200th anniversary with a new production at La Scala, an earthbound effort from director Gabriele Salvatores, but it was Riccardo Chailly who drew the wrath of sections of the Milanese audience. 

On the basis of its recent appearances, Chailly's varied musical diet is doing the Filarmonica a lot of good

A beautiful production by Alvis Hermanis of Madama Butterfly to open La Scala's new season, but it was Riccardo Chailly's presentation of Puccini's original 1904 score which caught the ear. 

La Scala might not have had all the right cards in its garter Tuesday night to prevent ending up holding aces and spaces, but it’s hard to play without a full deck in the first place.

Verdi's take on the Joan of Arc story may be thin on drama, but outstanding playing from Riccardo Chailly and the La Scala orchestra and top notch singing from Netrebko, Meli and Álvarez make this a wonderful Verdian evening.

In this last concert in the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Riccardo Chailly’s brief residency at the Barbican, all concerned were on top form. 

The Leipzig Kapellmeister Riccardo Chailly and his Gewandhausorchester demonstrate style and substance in two tone poems by Richard Strauss, with Christian Tetzlaff as the soloist in Mozart's K216 concerto.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra began its latest London residency with an impressive concert of Strauss and Mozart.

Riccardo Chailly kicks off his interim role as Principal Director at La Scala with Turandot, featuring Luciano Berio's ending, a score he knows like the back of his hand. 

Martha Argerich makes a triumphant return in her first concert with the Berlin Philharmonic in seven years. 

Despite Richard Strauss' few connections with Leipzig, the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly offered a vivdly characterized tribute to the composer on his 150th anniversary, from an affectionate Don Quixote to a witty - and furiously paced - Till Eulenspiegel. 

Mahler’s Symphony no. 8 had not been heard in Milan for 27 years. Tonight, Riccardo Chailly returned to perform the “Symphony of a Thousand” with his former band, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.

I sat down to hear the last concert of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s Brahms cycle under Riccardo Chailly at the Barbican with high hopes. Having heard the hype, it seemed that the restrained autumnal shades of the Violin Concerto in D major (with superstar Leonidas Kavakos) and the sheer compositional majesty of the Symphony no.

For anyone lucky enough to have witnessed the last Barbican residency from Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the striking, thoughtful and vivid accounts of Brahms they gave here should not be a surprise. In Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 2, however, orchestra outdid soloist.

In an era in which orchestras are supposed to have lost their distinctive 20th-century sounds, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig is one that retains its characteristic dark hue, with fascinating wind timbres that simply refuse to blend into a homogenised whole. And yet there is refinement and virtuosity to match the world’s best orchestras.

Arguably the highest-profile visiting orchestra of the season, Riccardo Chailly brought his Leipzig orchestra to Birmingham for a duo of 20th-century Russian works. The large audience was not disappointed, Rachmaninov’s second symphony in particular shining in a magnificent performance.

Two fine concerts from Riccardo Chailly’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra filled part of the space between end-of-season Proms from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. They brought Mendelssohn of refinement and poise to Prom 67 and dark, fateful thrust in Messiaen and Mahler for Prom 69.

The first of the two Proms by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra featured an all-Mendelssohn programme. The orchestra has a long tradition of performing Mendelssohn’s music, as he was their Music Director from 1835 until his early death in 1847.

Riccardo Chailly was much loved as prinicpal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, a position he held between 1988 and 2004. And even though tonight he played with his own Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, he received a hero’s welcome at the Concertgebouw.

If you watch one of Alfred Hitchcock's better movies (The Birds and The Man Who Knew Too Much are good examples), the timing and pace has a strange effect. The first half hour passes pleasantly enough: you meet the characters, and nothing too much happens. An hour in, and the action is running at break-neck pace, your pulse is racing, and your brain is straining to keep up.