Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Opéra national de Paris: Opéra Bastille

Barrie Kosky's makes a limited impact in his debut at Opéra de Paris, apart from an hallucinogenic Polovtsian Dances.

Tcherniakov reduces Berlioz' epic to little more than Circle Time therapy, a poor way to mark the composer's anniversary year.

It's a big night at the Opéra Bastille for their 350th anniversary season; Oropesa's dazzling coloratura stops the show; Andreas Kriegenburg sets the action interestingly in a Star Trek future.

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.

In April, Peter Mattei and Anna Netrebko were starring together in Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera. Less than a month later and they are reunited in Paris in Willy Decker's staging.

This Paris production of The Snow Maiden proves that director Dmitri Tcherniakov is today's greatest champion of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas. 

Despite the sombre staging, it’s the vocal fire that blazes in this impressive Trovatore in Paris.

The POB struggles to connect to the Nureyev legacy, in an underwhleming performance of La Bayadère. 

Under the artistic and musical direction of Olivier Py and Philippe Jordan, Verdi’s opera has ignited a veritable storm of both fervent criticism and ardent defence.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These wise words have fortunately not fallen on deaf ears at the Opéra de Paris, who have brought back their production of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and designed by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, first presented in Paris back in 2007.

For those who view Wagner’s Ring Cycle in symphonic terms, Siegfried is often described as the third movement Scherzo: an episode of comedy in between the existential musings of Die Walküre and the action-packed, apocalyptic Götterdämerung. Last night’s performance at the Opéra Bastille in Paris gave us plenty of high comedy and much more besides.

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.

Puccini’s Tosca is no stranger to the stages of Paris. With almost 300 performances of this opera to date at the Opéra National de Paris, Tosca has become, alongside Mozart’s Le Nozze de Figaro and Bizet’s Carmen, a staple of Paris’ opera houses.However, such popularity opens up challenges.

From time to time, audiences are presented with what I consider to be a rare event, a “dream” performer: one so convincing in his or her role that they become an ideal, establishing a standard to which all following interpretations will inevitably be compared – for example, Jacqueline du Pré’s interpretation of Elgar’s Cello Concerto has become a timeless benchmark.

​In each case, you know the murder is coming. In each case the music is explosive and closes the opera: there is nothing left to say except Canio's simple words: "La commedia è finita.

Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, is a tightly-wound setting of Shakespeare’s familiar tragedy. From the opening storm to the title character dying upon a kiss, it is more fragmentary and emotionally cool than his earlier work, an opera that tends to be more admired than loved.

Puccini's Il Trittico, performed last night at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, is a unique item in the repertoire: a series of three one act operas with little to link them except the composer's conceit of what would work together in an evening. Each opera clocks in at something under an hour, and despite the relatively short duration, each has plenty of time to develop its characters.