Live, On demand, Streamed event: Opera

Mascagni's stirring music and gripping storyline cast their spell over a festival audience at the edge of the Baltic Sea.

A good, honest staging and solid singing add up to an excellent new production – its third – at Opera Holland Park. 

Yesterday, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, where devotees of Richard Wagner converge annually from all over the world, opened its doors again for this year’s festival. Traditionally presented on the first evening, the new production for this season was Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (to use the opera’s full name), presented to a capacity audience.

It’s a small miracle that the production has been recreated so well in such a short time frame.

Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna provides an airy bon-bouche to Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, brilliantly sung by Natalya Romaniw and David Butt Philip and conducted to fairy-tale perfection by Sian Edwards

Young musicians and experienced stars combine for a thrilling Frau in its centenary year

The young singers spin any raw material into opera gold, sending the audience home as uplifted as if they’d just glugged a bellyful of Pimm’s.

Here was the much-loved three-act opera Rigoletto, yes, but chances are, it was one far beyond Verdi’s wildest dreams.

André Barbe and Renaud Doucet's Magic Flute is ideal entertainment for a fizz-filled summer night.

Alex Ollé focuses in the princess's trauma to provide a back story for Puccini’s problematic last opera; Eri Nakamura captivates the New National Theatre audience.

Rossini’s La gazza ladra in New York exposed an enthusiastic public to an auditive and visual happening that was entirely novel for many long-time opera lovers.

The recently formed Teatro Nuovo provide fine entertainment with Bellini's rarely performed second opera.

West Australian Opera's production of Sweeney Todd was an excellent, crackling performance, with everyone involved in top form, with some unexpected players showing great talent in this not-very-operatic work.

Opera Australia delivers a sensational new Elena Kats-Chernin opera about the immensely gifted and troubled Australian painter, Brett Whiteley.

In his 2016 opera Blank Out, Dutch composer Michel van der Aa has managed to create a new kind of operatic ‘reality’ that resonates powerfully with today’s Zeitgeist. Highly recommended.

Musically and dramatically, Jay Lesenger's production makes a strong case for John Corigliano's sole opera.

Paula Sides as Donna Anna has an appealing sound throughout her range, a hint of spinto power, and gave the vocal performance of the night.

Top drawer singing and comic acting bring out the comedy in Laurent Pelly's light-hearted production

Notwithstanding director Pippo Delbono's narcissistic excesses, his staging confirmed itself as effective and penetrating.

Every July, Buxton’s charming opera house hosts an international festival of opera, literature and the arts. This year the festival opened with a strong familiar favourite, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

A welcome return to the Glyndebourne Festival for Melly Still's staging, which brings out the full emotional range of Dvořák’s fairytale of denial, heartbreak and forgiveness.

This year’s revival of Andreas Homoki's production features excellent principals, choruses, and sublime orchestration under Fabio Luisi’s seasoned baton. The staging takes far fewer accolades.

The co-existence of amateurs and professionals is weighted firmly towards the latter.

Davide Livermore's new production of Donizetti's Anna Bolena offers moderate pleasures, with solid performances by Ermonela Jaho in the title role, and Carmen Topciu as Jane Seymour.

Director Louisa Muller overcomes the problems of opening a ghost story in natural daylight to deliver plenty of operatic chills. 

Riveting production shows that Nixon in China still speaks to today's audiences. 

John Osborn leads a very successful premiere of Peter Konwitschny's new production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in Dresden

An exquisitely matched pair of sopranos as Susanna and the Countess make up for some quirky casting elsewhere. 

In Robert Carsen's staging, the “dead city” is absent: the scenery showing a bourgeois room that one imagines overlooking a bright avenue in Vienna or Berlin rather than a dark alley in Bruges.

Graeme Murphy's new Madama Butterfly opens with arrestingly kinky imagery and heavily exploits digital projections thereafter, but the joy of the production is in the uniform excellence of the performers, headed by the outstanding Karah Son in the title role.

A trip to the moon caps a week of high aspirations and bold musical excursions at the National Theater's Opera Nova festival.

Messrs Rattle and Sellars bewitch the Barbican audience with a sumptuous rendition of Janáček's magnum opus. 

Edward Gardner conducts a richly entertaining account of Berlioz's masterpiece in Birmingham

Barrie Kosky's divisive production returns to The Royal Opera but has lost its zing. 

Andreas Homoki’s new Zurich production capitalises on some quirky staging, but features superb voices in its principal roles and shows the best of the house’s joint choirs.

Darkness sits alongside comedy in a new production of Humperdinck's delicious children's opera.

The Canadian director's aesthetic is a perfect fit for Gluck's work. Dazzling performances by Gaëlle Arquez and Stéphane Degout. Great musical direction by Thomas Hengelbrock.

Any occasion to see Donizetti's first big success is to be welcomed. The Longborough Festival's new production of Anna Bolena gives us a Tudor court in terror of a brutish, Henry VIII as he seeks to supplant Anne Boleyn with Jane Seymour.

Both vocally and instrumentally the performance  was a high-class one

The evening’s most revelatory performance came from the young countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Medoro. 

During the “Salce” and “Ave Maria” in Act Four Bezsmertna turned this to magical effect, thinning out and floating her shimmering soprano into gossamer threads.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kevin Newbury see Candide as a coming-of-age story, placing it in their own high-school years, specifically 1992, making Westphalia a USA knockoff.

A title role performance full of depth from Terfel and a barnstorming comic interlude from Tomlinson provide some great moments, but much of this Boris fails to rise above the ordinary.

In the role created for Jenny Lind, Lisette Oropesa, in her debut in the theater, shows her magnificent silvery voice, beautiful vibrato and impeccable colorature.

Mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly and soprano Susanna Hurrell were the eponymous pair and, my, how they chewed the scenery.

A Ring cycle of sustained excellence closes with telling contributions from Foster, Vinke and Pesendorfer in the three lead roles.

Don Giovanni returns to the Palais Garnier. The production by Ivo van Hove lacks energy but is wonderfully served by a cast of great young talents.

Dmitri Tcherniakov's staging turns Rimsky-Korsakov's opera into storytelling for an autistic boy, but does he deliver a fairy tale ending? 

An entertaining night of Baroque music, costume and movement, but above all wonderful singing, at the historic Orangerieschloss at Potsdam