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The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Rafael Payare offer up a thrilling Beethoven 9 to close the season.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain offered a delicately detailed reading of Das Lied von der Erde with two French Canadian soloists.

Tcherniakov reduces Berlioz' epic to little more than Circle Time therapy, a poor way to mark the composer's anniversary year.

Herheim pulls us in unexpected directions, makes us laugh and makes us think as we enjoy fine Rossinian music and singing in Opéra de Lyon's production.

A strong cast led by Anna Stéphany's Sesto made the most of the last opportunity to hear Glyndebourne's production of Mozart's final opera.

A grimly dark setting for Mozart's final opera, Sesto and Tito haunted by childhood memories. 

Music Director Ludovic Morlot, known for his intriguing programming, outdid himself with a summery breeze of a program that enchanted from beginning to end.

The coda to Juliet's "Convoi funèbre" crystallised all that was exceptional about this performance of Berlioz's symphonie dramatique.

For anyone seeing Carmen for the first time, this Royal Opera revival will have been a more than satisfactory evening. Old hands hoping to see something extra will find it in Hymel's Don José and Car's Micaëla, but not elsewhere.

The task sounded Herculean: turning Benvenuto Cellini, that reputedly difficult, flawed work by Berlioz, into an utterly entertaining show that renders justice to its youthfully energetic music. This is what Terry Gilliam manages to pull off... and it is nothing short of miraculous.

Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette attracted a large audience for a concert performance from Madrid, enticed by Roberto Alagna's Roméo.

Opium-induced hallucinations, French period bassoons as ripe as Camembert and a rare appearance by a serpent illuminated a thrilling Symphonie fantastique at Cadogan Hall.

Christmastime comes with its musical traditions, from sing-along Messiahs to Christmas carols to Mariah Carey singing “All I Want for Christmas is You”. And there’s no denying that shouting any of the above at the top of your lungs will immediately get you into the Christmas spirit.

The last opera of the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle – the second of the composer’s operas to be performed in this Mozart-dominated season at the Royal Opera House – Così fan tutte pivots on two pairs of young lovers whose affection is put to the test by an old ‘philosopher’, Don Alfonso. Women, the old man argues, are all the same: never constant in their love, never loyal to their men.

Read our review of Des McAnuff's production of Faust by Gounod, in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

In this Royal Opera production of Gounod's Faust, there's no question about who's in charge. Not only does the devil get all the best lines, but he bosses the show from beginning to end. Clad in feathered hat, long curly wig and reminiscent of the Laughing Cavalier, René Pape plays Mephistopheles quite superbly, alternating between mercurial bouffe comic lines and extreme sardonic nastiness.