Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Francesco Meli

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.

Five highly dissatisfied lead characters find only disastrous or ambiguous outcomes. Yet there are few greater operas than this.

This is an Aida for the 21st century, with many pertinent things to say about oppression.

Katharina Thalbach offers a traditional staging at the Semperoper, with fine vocal performances led by Krassimira Stoyanova, Francesco Meli and Oksana Volkova. 

After a fifty-year absence from Roman stages, Verdi's opera about the Maid of Orléans makes an appearance at Teatro dell'Opera under the conduction of Daniele Gatti.

As Italy moves into a third lockdown, defiant operatic affirmations at the Teatro alla Scala. 

Riccardo Chailly leads a splendid cast in Verdi’s masterpiece as La Scala leads the way in these troubled times, when the opera world is so volatile and fragile, by focusing on the music, holding onto artistic values. 

Anna Netrebko chews the scenery as Floria Tosca… and there’s a lot of it to get her teeth into in David Livermore’s busy staging in Milan.

Riccardo Muti conducted a stirring performance of Verdi's Requiem to mark the 30th anniversary of Karajan's death.

An impressively cast revival for Verdi's one-time neglected masterpiece at Covent Garden.

Verdi's fifth opera can be considered a blueprint for Trovatore and deserves a more regular place in the repertoire, but it needs more sincere advocacy than Bechtolf is prepared to grant.

Muti unlocks the immense dramatic potential of Verdi's revolutionary score, providing a wealth of colour and detail capable of conjuring mysterious Shakespearean worlds with no need for staging.

Every time Ponchielli’s La Gioconda is staged its popular fortune is renewed, but the diffidence of the musicography also remains unchanged.

Interesting ideas and a brilliant orchestral performance aren't enough to overcome a visually dull staging, predictable choreography and a lack of chemistry between the protagonists.

Muti's reading of the score is extraordinary, both for its sophistication and originality.

Netrebko's Violetta is now fuller in body and voice than in her former incarnation. Goodbye to the fresh-faced damsel we saw in Salzburg; hello to a larger-than-life courtesan in her twilight years.

Were it not for a sterling musical display, built on the shoulders of bass Ferruccio Furlanetto and conductor Myung-whun Chung, this could have been a very long night indeed.

Christian Spuck’s new ballet Messa da Requiem in Zurich, is a breathtakingly powerful achievement. But its profound impact is spurred by more than dance alone.

Gianandrea Noseda leads a fiery account of Verdi's “opera in ecclesiastical garb” to open the LSO's new season.

Francesco Meli asserts his credentials as one of the top tenors singing Manrico; David Bösch's staging lacks attention to detail.

Verdi's take on the Joan of Arc story may be thin on drama, but outstanding playing from Riccardo Chailly and the La Scala orchestra and top notch singing from Netrebko, Meli and Álvarez make this a wonderful Verdian evening.

At the Dutch National Opera, director Àlex Ollé from La Fura dels Baus stages a dark and monochromatic Trovatore, in which the four stars shine.

Placido Domingo was "suffering from a bad cold" on Saturday afternoon, so baritone Luca Salsi, scheduled to sing Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor later that night, put on the costume and delivered a convincing last minute Don Carlo in Verdi's Ernani.

Andrea De Rosa’s atmospheric production of Simon Boccanegra uses a series of landscapes projected onto a cyclorama to evoke the Gulf of Genoa. 

Riccardo Muti conducts Verdi's Requiem in Madrid and forever changes the lives of the audience that witnessed in astonishment.

Vittorio Borrelli's double bill of Zemlinsky's Eine Florentinische Tragödie and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi had the audience constantly re-evaluating not only what is real and artifice, but what could be deemed virtue and vice.

According to Riccardo Muti in a recent interview for Chicago Classical Review, the cardinal sins of modern conductors when interpreting Verdi are over-aggression and vulgarity. He also notes in an interview included in the concert program that one of the most unique aspects of Macbeth is its use of expressively soft dynamics, even going as far to call the technique avant-garde.

The Verbier Festival Orchestra is the centrepiece of the festival from which it takes its name. Hundreds of young players hoping to start a professional orchestral career audition each year for the chance to work with big-name conductors, the likes of which this year include Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and, for this concert, Gianandrea Noseda.

Every once in a while, I hear a concert that grips me from the first note and doesn’t let go until the very last. Daniele Gatti and the Philharmonia’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall was such a concert.There are some caveats to make: I’m not catholic, I’m not very religious and I’m not particularly steeped in the tradition of liturgical music.

Almost any singer with Plácido Domingo’s résumé would be happily retired from the stage at age 71, but Domingo is obviously not any singer. With over 140 roles performed, the Spanish tenor’s legacy is unparalleled, and that legacy is still growing.

When I heard that Washington National Opera’s upcoming production of Jules Massenet’s romantic and beautifully tragic opera Werther would be set in the 20th century, I was intrigued.

In 1971, the thirty year-old Placido Domingo made his Covent Garden début as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca and in the intervening forty years, he has given two hundred and thirty performances in more than twenty-five roles for Royal Opera House audiences.