Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Asher Fisch

An impressive new work by Paul Stanhope, Mahāsāgar (the Indian Ocean) is well sung and played by the WASO choir and orchestra with soloists Sara Macliver and Andrew Goodwin, alongside some oceanic favourites

An enjoyable performance of Die Fledermaus from the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and an excellent cast of singers is somewhat mitigated by the venue, as the celebrated Perth Concert Hall undergoes renovation.

Excerpts from Wagner's opus magnum, minus the singing, along with a Rossini overture and a new work by local composer Lachlan Skipworth make for an enjoyable concert by the larger forces of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. 

After a six month gap, the Nationaltheater welcomes a limited audience to an opera-in-concert of extraordinary beauty of singing.

There were no unorthodox interpretations in this program, which featured The Cleveland Orchestra’s associate concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, just excellent, straightforward music making.

Wagner is a rare bird in Perth; the second *Tristan und Isolde* in 12 years worth the wait, no less for being a concert performance, and for bringing Skelton's masterful interpretation to an Australian audience

A revival of a traditional staging,  with great singers and full of dramatic energy

Better conducting and supertitles would also help breathe life into this drab revival of Bayerische Staatsoper's Don Carlo.

Martin Kušej's production of La forza del destino is hard hitting and intelligent: an imperfect orchestral performance is more than compensated for by an outstanding cast of singers.

The Merry Wives of Windsor – relocated to Scotland – sing beautifully, as does their wooer, Falstaff. But it's not clear why they're in Scotland in the first place, or how the rest of the staging fits the opera.

If you let yourself be transported to director David Bösch’s strange world, you'll find an Elisir d'amore that is heartbreaking and uplifting by turns.

The Il trovatore on offer at the Lyric this month would make a fine CD, its vocal strengths to be found equally among the leading foursome, but its weaknesses are visual and dramaturgical, and these are plenty too.

Martin Kušej’s modern production of La forza del destino emphasizes that familial and religious oppressions can be one and the same, destroying the love of free spirits.      

Wagner famously idealized the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art that incorporates many artistic media into a single piece. He would have appreciated Seattle Opera’s production of Götterdämmerung.

Seattle Opera’s Siegfried takes place in familiar territory. Mime lives in the part of the forest where the gods roamed in Das Rheingold, and the dragon has made its lair where Hunding and Siegmund fought in Die Walküre (there’s even a bloodstain on the rock, which the Wanderer touches regretfully).

After Sunday night’s breathtaking Das Rheingold, it was difficult to imagine Die Walküre could be more beautiful or committed. Seattle Opera outdid themselves with this second installment of the Ring cycle, which featured energetic playing and singing, gorgeous stage pictures, and devastatingly believable acting from all of the singers.

Some Ring cycles are based on ideological concepts; Seattle Opera’s current Ring cycle is based on a place. That place is the Pacific Northwest of the United States, home to such extraordinary natural beauty that stage director Stephen Wadsworth has deemed it fit for the gods.

Dating from 2008, the Semperoper’s current production of Rigoletto is quite intriguing. It’s set in what appears to be a swanky 21st-century Berlin apartment – industrial, sparse and effortlessly cool – and in many ways this is an interesting choice.

Otello is usually considered to be Verdi’s most mature opera. It was one of the last ones he wrote, the result of a plot by his publisher Riccordi and the conductor Franco Faccio to draw him out of early retirement. The result is a work which combines all the aspects of Verdi’s earlier operatic style with Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk.