Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Elīna Garanča

All the hallmarks of a Muti performance are on display as the maestro returns to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in a magnificent reading of Verdi's Requiem. 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a blazing performance of Bluebeard's Castle, although interpretations of Wagner and Debussy sounded tired and under-rehearsed. 

Strong performances from Elīna Garanča, Barbara Hannigan and John Relyea plus innovative stage direction make for a standout production.

Elīna Garanča's Kundry proves the star of Kirill Serebrennikov's prison staging of Parsifal, a powerful exploration of religion and violence. 

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.

Robert Carsen's Aida focusses on the brutality of war, with powerful lead performances from Angel Blue, SeokJong Baek and Elīna Garanča, plus strong orchestral colours from Sir Mark Elder.

A delayed season opening at the Teatro di San Carlo, but a night of epic grand opera as Claus Guth and Juraj Valčuha deliver a weighty Don Carlo.

Inspiration eludes the director as a new staging of Saint-Säens’ biblical epic falls flat but for some excellent musical performances led by outstanding mezzo Elīna Garanča. 

 Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov relives his own arrest in 2017 in his new production of Wagner's Bühnenweihfestspiel at the Wiener Staatsoper.

What do you do when your planned season opener bites the dust? Fly in the stars and put on a concert performance of a verismo favourite. 

Forget powerhouse “hojotohos” and sandblasting brass. Elīna Garanča and Christian Thielemann offered more intimate portraits of these composers at the Großes Festspielhaus.

Edward Gardner's conducting brings out the nuances of Berlioz's complex score, but The Met's concert staging lacks theatrical thrust.

Daniel Barenboim conducts an underwhelming cast in the Staatsoper's new Samson et Dalila, and Argentinian director Damián Szifron's operatic debut is stale and cliché-ridden. 

The Met Orchestra’s closing performance of the season saw Yannick Nézet-Séguin lead the ensemble in Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder with Elīna Garanča and an arresting Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

With Malcolm Martineau, the Latvian mezzo delivered poise and polish and transcendent Rückert Lieder. 

The Met's new season opens with a new Samson et Dalila only marginally more trashy than Saint-Saëns’ peculiar brand of kitschy orientalism.

...the perpetuum mobile character building to a raucously joyous finale that elicited genuine, generous applause.

Saint-Saëns' exotic dip into the Bible is given a cool update in Alexandra Liedtke's new production at the Wiener Staatsoper.

Elīna Garanča brings subtle sonorities to an otherwise bravura and boisterous concert by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Even stronger than first time round, Michieletto's impressive staging is complemented by an outstanding double role debut from Hymel and a heartbreaking Santuzza from Elīna Garanča.

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s new Paris staging of Verdi's epic Don Carlos is cold and glassy, but the vocal performances at the Bastille more than compensate.

There are several things wrong with the new Robert Carsen directed Der Rosenkavalier that just opened at the Met, but the singing is not among them.

Sondra Radvanovsky tackles another Donizetti queen - Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux - at The Met. 

Poise, control, stillness. Within two minutes of her Wigmore Hall debut, the qualities that make Elīna Garanča a consummate Lieder recitalist were evident.

Elina Garanča was alluring in a lovely recital of Brahms, Duparc and Rachmaninov with pianist Malcolm Martineau. 

On a balmy evening in Milan, there was anticipation in the air as queues stretched way back for a sold out performance of Carmen. But a flat atmosphere soon fell in the auditorium itself, with lacklustre singing and confused staging to blame.

Michaela Kaune, Albert Pesendorfer, Eun Yee You and Elīna Garanča transported the audience to a lost time and place, even while embodying their characters’ ultimate timelessness. 

The celebrated Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča is not unknown to the Amsterdam public. Here, she returned to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw to give a very polished performance of songs by Schumann, Berg and Strauss.

Apart from the precious Quattro pezzi sacri, Verdi wrote very little sacred music until this Requiem, probably due to his agnosticism. When Alessandro Manzoni, one of the most important and admired Italian literary figures, died on the 22nd of May 1873, Verdi felt that something in the Italian cultural world had come to an end.

Elina Garanča can always be counted on for a coolly polished performance. Her silvery mezzo is beautiful, even throughout her range, and impeccably on pitch. She is musically tasteful, and her sound has grown in recent years. But something often seems to be missing. While she’s too accomplished to call bland, her performances rarely show evidence of a beating heart.

Read our review of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

As crowd-pulling operatic divas go, most of the attention goes to the sopranos. But a select number of mezzos have the same kind of following, and Latvia's Elina Garanča is high on that list. There are just a few roles where the mezzo is the main character of the opera (many of the others are "witches and bitches", as Garanča puts it), and the big one of those is Carmen.

Faith and glamour have bookended this year’s Salzburg Festival, a move met with incredulity in certain quarters and yet one not entirely alien to Austrian customs, if one looks to the 20 or so most glittering events of the Viennese ball season, which is promptly curtailed by Ash Wednesday (still observed by much of the population here with high Catholic asceticism).

Read our review of Richard Eyre's production of Carmen by Bizet in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Cesare Lievi's production of Rossini­'s Cenerentola in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.