Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Margaret Plummer

This abridged version of Massenet's Cendrillon was clearly chosen for a wide Sydney audience, succeeding as a popular offering in the Australian summer holiday season. 

Wotan's predicaments provide Sydney's victory: Chief Conductor Simone Young has her musicians on some of their best form in recent years, with only a few question marks over an excellent concert performance.

La Scala presents a new production of Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece, with an excellent cast led by tenor Brandon Jovanovich.

Pretty Yende and John Osborn bring star quality to this revival of John Dew’s Vienna staging of Bellini's Civil War opera.

That Boris was sung by a Ukrainian in times like this might or might not have been a coincidence. But that Alexander Tsymbalyuk was an excellent choice for the role is indisputable. 

Adam Palka shines as the devil in this revival of Frank Castorf's multimedia staging that relocates the work to mid-20th century Paris, around the end of the Algerian War.

In Vienna State Opera's new production of Rigoletto, director Pierre Audi brings us close to a Rigoletto less freakish, more identifiably everyday. 

Last night’s performance, the second after a serious casting face-lift held to that tradition, and was very well received despite its inherent flaws, thanks to some very fine singing.

In the opening scene of Pinchgut Opera's latest production, Gluck's rarely performed Iphigénie en Tauride, a swirling musical, dramatic and visually strobe-enhanced tempest is belted out. 

For the past ten years, Pinchgut Opera has established a reputation for excellence through mounting one opera production annually in Sydney (the name derives from an island in Sydney’s harbour, established as a prison from the beginnings of settlement). Their focus has hitherto been on lesser-known Baroque works, with a few later 18th-century outliers.

I could not have asked for a more magical setting in which to watch Verdi's La Traviata. In front of me was the floating stage, surrounded by gently rippling water glistening in the evening moonlight. On the left rose the buildings of Sydney's central business district, while on my right was the beautiful harbour bridge and opera house.