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Ulf Schirmer bows out as General Music Director as the last of Wagner's 13 operas completes a successful Festival Wagner 22 in Leipzig.

Irene Théorin and Andreas Schager lead a stunning musical performance, as Guy Cassiers vision of The Ring becomes clear.  

Daniel Barenboim conducts much of Siegfried as an intimate chamber opera, resulting in an unexpected musical joy, with an excellent cast of singers headed by Michael Volle’s Wanderer.

The Staatsoper Berlin celebrate the arrival of Michael Volle, a splendid Wotan, aided by a strong ensemble of singers and Daniel Barenboim's leadership.

Daniel Barenboim led a performance of deliberate tempo with a great ensemble of singers.  Guy Cassiers‘ production, while visually stunning at times, does little to enhance the performance.

The world is gloriously redeemed in the gripping final installment of San Francisco Opera's Ring cycle.

Both the technical effects and the singing impress in San Francisco Opera's dark Siegfried.

At San Francisco Opera, conductor Donald Runnicles and a top-notch cast deliver a delicious Rheingold in Francesca Zambello's colorful production.

An exceptional musical performance was enhanced by a streamlined but ultimately moving staging in an evening of near perfection in Dresden.

Ragnarök: the Swedish title for Götterdämmerung resonates with Old Norse folk memories of universal inundation and overthow of the order of the gods.

The Met revived Beethoven's only opera Fidelio with a strong cast and excellent chorus and orchestra, with a production that celebrates liberty and love.

Joining Music Director Jaap van Zweden were some familiar faces who had appeared in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in the same or different roles, and new faces appearing for the first time.

Not even the musical genius of Daniel Barenboim could turn Harry Kupfer’s irritating Sitzprobe production into a “Namenlose Freude”.

Frankfurt Opera's 2012 production of Götterdämmerung with its emphasis on the contemporary human issues was a successful conclusion of the revived Ring.

Staatsoper Berlin's Götterdämmerung featured memorable vocal performances from Iréne Theorin and Andreas Schager, with Daniel Barenboim and his orchestra providing the rest of the drama.

A strong performance at Staatsoper Berlin of the third opera of the Ring, Siegfried, was a showcase for tenor Andreas Schager in the title role.

The second evening of Staatsoper Berlin's Ring featured an exceptionally strong musical performance, both from the orchestra and the singers. 

The revival of Das Rheingold at Staatsoper Berlin was still marred by distracting use of dancers on stage, but musically it was a great success. 

Sir Mark Elder led the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and an inspired team of soloists headed by Klaus Florian Vogt into a highly-charged performance of Lohengrin.

Director Michael Thalheimer staging Weber’s Der Freischütz entirely in the Wolf’s Glen, albeit relocated from a “fearsome forest gorge” to what looks like a badger’s sett. 

An uneven yet unforgettable performance, thanks to conductor Jaap van Zweden’s seductive colouring of the score and Jennifer Wilson’s refulgent Isolde.

Sir Simon Rattle concludes the Ring Cycle in Vienna with a detailed and intricate reading of the opera with an excellent cast.

Nina Stemme makes a memorable role debut as Elektra in Vienna in a new production set in a coal-filled basement of a 1910 Viennese town house.

Fidelio waves goodbye to Barenboim at La Scala, and a fine production marks the occasion with a firework display. 

Amid red carpets and canapés, the Lyric Opera’s 2013/14 season opened on Saturday night with a work that perfectly suited the storm gathering above as ball-gowned luminaries swept into the hall: Verdi’s Otello, that late masterpiece of mood and terraced intensities.

The devil, they say, has all the best lines. In yesterday's performance of Verdi's Otello at the Met, the villain was simply sensational. Falk Struckmann's delivery of Jago's Credo in un Dio crudel (“I believe in a cruel God”) was a masterpiece of nihilism, combining power and richness of voice with a tone of pure, matter of fact evil.

Read our review of Renée Fleming's production of Verdi­'s Otello in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

If the painstaking recreation of Rome during the Napoleonic Wars is stripped away from the setting of Tosca. If choral numbers, sparing to begin with, are muted as distant drumbeats. If the title character is reinterpreted as a country girl with little artifice rather than a grand diva whose sheer confidence and sexuality prove irresistible to men.