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The Proms Youth Chorus and BBC Phil bring brimming new life to Haydn's masterpiece.

John Osborn leads a very successful premiere of Peter Konwitschny's new production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in Dresden

Based on Theodor Fontane's novel Oceane von Parceval, Detlev Glanert's eleventh opera is given its world premiere at Deutsche Oper.

Osborn absolutely lives the part; he negotiated formidable heights, intricate passage work and the sheer volume of notes with style and clarity as well as colour and nuance. 

Damiano Michieletto's new production in Venice sets the operetta in the 1950s. 

In a score that can be a Technicolor wallow, Jurowski’s sure sense of dramatic pulse and balance, encompassed the brash dance rhythms, religious grandeur, vivid tone painting and the extremes of dissonance.

Has Health and Safety finally caught up with the Spanish Inquisition? A flameless auto-da-fé and some low-key individual performances meant this revival took time to hit its stride. 

Deutsche Oper Berlin performed an intensely focussed opera on the birth and death of one man based on Jon Fosse's novel – a memorable and moving contemplation on life.

A threadbare staging from Graham Vick allows Haas’ innovative score to shine. Drama is modest, but complements sophisticated music to project an impressively unified vision.

Peter Konwitschny’s Tannhäuser at Dresden’s Semperoper dates back to 1997, making it relatively old for an opera production, and though I sense this may be its last revival, it is still modern and engaging.

In Act II of Tannhäuser, Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, sets the theme of the singing contest that is about to take place in his hall by asking: “Can you describe love’s nature to me?” To some extent, the entire opera is an examination of two very different answers to that question.

Georges Bizet’s first major opera, composed and performed in Paris when he was a mere 25, has the dubious distinction of being both a success and a flop, depending on who is asked. Audiences at the première loved it, but critics panned it.

J.S. Bach didn’t write an opera, but if he had, it’d probably be the best opera in the world. Fortunately for us, he wrote the next best thing, his Mattäus-Passion, a work of such dramatic power, that even in the concert or church settings in which it is usually performed, its highly emotional narrative thread is still captivating.

Puccini is one of opera’s best loved composers. With so many popular titles to his name, it is somewhat surprising how infrequently his first great success, Manon Lescaut, is performed today. What makes this even more unusual is the opera’s universal appeal.

In the early years of the 20th century Puccini was a very happy man. His most recent opera, Tosca, was proving as successful as La Bohème, and the lucky composer was being summoned to opera houses throughout Europe for its premières. In the summer of 1900 Puccini attended the première performance of Tosca in London, and soaked in the atmosphere of Europe’s largest city.

There’s something relentlessly dark about Verdi’s Don Carlo. King Philippe and his son, the eponymous Don Carlo, are both very troubling characters, the former power-hungry and vengeful, the latter plagued by desire for his stepmother.

The Dresden Semperoper premiered a new production of Fidelio scarcely a month before the fall of East Germany. Much has changed in the intervening decade and a bit, but the Semperoper is still playing the same Fidelio. It doesn't take much knowledge of recent German history to understand why it was a sensation at the time.

It is customary in German-speaking countries to perform Wagner’s Parsifal on Good Friday, so it was quite a bold move for the Semperoper in Dresden to put on Tannhäuser instead, especially in Peter Konwitschny’s strongly anti-Christian production.