Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Nikolai Schukoff

Making her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, the wife of Met GM Peter Gelb crushes any talk of nepotism at the downbeat. 

Leoncavallo's opera is a rare example of a tragic, verismo opera where not a soul dies... neither by natural causes nor foul play.  

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

Hans Neuenfels new Salome proves a strangely non-committal affair at the Staatsoper, but Thomas Guggeis conducts impressively.

An unlikely coupling of one-act operas by Zemlinsky and Puccini bears fruit in a staging that reveals their thematic parallels while leaving their obvious differences on show.

Christopher Alden's risk-taking, Expressionist-tinged production of the early Wagner breakthrough is provocative in all the right ways.

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. 

With its minimalist but grandiose sets, the imposing sound of the Choir of the Dutch National Opera and the excellent conducting of Marc Albrecht, there is much to be enjoyed in this revival of Pierre Audi’s Lohengrin in Amsterdam.

While there are jarring visual aspects to this production of Bizet's Carmen at the SemperOper, Dresden, this was an enjoyable performance which is a feast for the ears, if not the eyes.

In program notes, Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, calls Parsifal “the culmination of Wagner’s work”. For his orchestra’s recent celebration of Wagner’s bicentennial at the Kennedy Center, Eschenbach programmed a concert performance of Act III of the composer’s final opera: the culmination of the culmination, one could say.

The lights dimmed and an announcer explained that following the destruction of earth’s ecosystem, there had been a scramble to rocket bases and a rush to transport surviving life to the nearest planet, Mars.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Attila is not an opera that one hears often. Composed during his self-styled “galley period” – before he found his mature musical voice with Rigoletto – Attila has inherent musical and dramaturgical weaknesses. With one foot still firmly rooted in bel canto tradition, the numerous cabalettas can be exhausting, even ridiculous, considering the dramatic nature of the text.

The packed hall at the Opéra de Bastille was in for a particularly interesting evening as they arrived for the Opéra National de Paris’ newest production of Bizet’s Carmen. This is an important event that brings out both the regular opera-goers and Carmen lovers, and those curious enough to buy a ticket to see the company’s latest creation.

Tradition has it in Vienna that while the Wiener Philharmoniker ring in the New Year to the strains of the Blue Danube and other Strauss family hits, the Wiener Symphoniker give festive performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Konzerthaus.