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The quality cast purred, but glorious roars are required to jolt audiences from placid enjoyment of Opera Australia’s gorgeous 24-year-old production of this Verdi classic.

Bracing and emotionally direct performances from the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Nicole Car, in a carefully-planned programme.

Odyssey Opera comes full circle closing its season “Trial By Fire“ with another opera rooted in Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orléans, Giovanna d’Arco. Verdi’s seventh opera is an uneven, retrograde effort which fails to mine further the rich vein he had struck in Ernani.

The role of Luisa, some of the daintier coloratura aside, fits Sonya Yoncheva like a glove. 

Nicola Raab puts Byron at the heart of Il corsaro in her new production for the Palau de les Arts, but doesn’t always know what to do with him.

Michael Volle makes his debut as Verdi's not-so-Fat Knight in Mario Martone's new production at the Staatsoper, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. 

The Royal Opera's revival of Phyllida Lloyd's production is marked by two outstanding Verdian singers and a superb rendering of the score from Pappano and the ROH Orchestra.

A (nearly) complete performance of the original French version of Don Carlos forms the centrepiece of Daniele Rustioni's Verdi Festival in Lyon. 

Despite the entertainment value and striking imagery, Kramer's production is a surprisingly dull affair, with curiously little chemistry between the lead couple.

In Lyon, Daniele Rustioni drives through a pulsating reading of Macbeth, Ivo van Hove's imaginative setting not always fully backed by the vocal performances.

In a disappointing revival of Hugo de Ana's clichéd and clumsy production, Liudmyla Monastyrska and Violeta Urmana confronted each other with their superb vocal techniques and diverging styles.

The Iván Fischer Opera Company makes a triumphant foray into Verdi's oeuvre.

A celebration of composer, soloist and orchestral excellence in an eclectic, if slightly eccentric, gala opening program to launch the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's 2018 season.

The team of soloists, the chorus and the orchestra, under the baton of Philippe Auguin, powerfully conveyed the spectacular qualities of Verdi's Don Carlo.

A suggestive staging barely supported by the musical side

The remarkable performance of young soprano Christina Nilsson does not completely rescue a mixed-bag cast and a lack of Personenregie at the Stockholm Royal Opera.

Riccardo Muti brought a Verdian quality to Brahms’ Second Symphony, adding a certain Italian volatility and declamatory grandeur to the music.

If Chung is sometimes hailed as the greatest living conductor of Verdi, here was a performance to support that claim.

If you had received an invitation to a masked ball at which there turned out to be no masks and no dancing, it's understandable you'd feel disappointed. 

When the entire plot is triggered by a freak accident, you can't blame director David Pountney for making Fate itself one of the key characters.  

A truly magnificent evening from Chailly and his Milanese orchestra.

Towering above all the other meritorious singers in this performance, was the phenomenal Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili 

Christopher Alden’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto returned to Toronto tighter, more focussed and with fewer dramatic incongruities. Add to this that every aspect of the music making was top notch and it made for a fine evening at the theatre.

The biggest stigma associated with opera in Ireland is not that it is an elitist art form, but that it is not “Irish”, and that it doesn’t belong to Irish culture, more of a recent import, like pasta, or avocado.

The father-daughter exchanges between Dmitri Platanias's jester and Sofia Fomina's Gilda prove the highlights of an evening which doesn't always catch fire.

The Met Opera's concert performance of Verdi's Requiem was an emotional tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 

Monstyrska dominates as Abigaille, Domingo brings his unique baritenor style to the title role, Thaddeus Strassberger creates a riot of colour and antiquarian style.

Tokyo's New National Theatre is currently celebrating its twentieth anniversary season with three new productions and revivals of their most popular productions including Vincent Boussard’s minimal yet colourful Traviata.

Renzetti's traditional rendition does not reveal yet unprecedented details of a score that is the summation of Verdi's mastery and his last work – his third based on Shakespeare.

A sizeable contingent of curious musicologists and critics gathered for the Milan première. It was a gifted a performance with plenty of insights to offer.

Show-stealing bass singing from Krisztián Cser and an immensely powerful Act 2 make a persuasive case for Verdi's neglected predecessor to Rigoletto.

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.

This was a performance that had you lickng your lips for Santi’s return next season with Zeffirelli’s time-honoured take on Aida.

Even in a festival like Wexford’s, you cannot resist the attraction of a beloved opera that you know by heart.

After a nine-year absence, Martha Argerich returned to Carnegie Hall with stunning Prokofiev with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

With Gergely Kesselyák on double duty as conductor and director, this revival proves musically outstanding but theatrically less than satisfying.

There are no answers, nor indeed many probing questions, in this Scottish Opera revival of Sir David McVicar’s production from 2008, but it is sumptuous and enjoyable.

In the city of Freud there is nothing like a bit of family drama to put one in the mood for a great season of opera!

A mural depicting Etna erupting is the only hint of Sicily in Stefan Herheim’s opulent staging, returning to Covent Garden for the first time since the Royal Opera’s Verdi bicentenary celebrations in 2013. 

A dark minimalist inspiration for Vincent Boussard’s co-production of the Boston version of Un ballo in maschera, returning to the Gran Teatre del Liceu after 16 years.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Rigoletto evokes visually the contours and high-contrast relief of a surrealist painting. 

For The Cleveland Orchestra’s gala concert, music director Franz Welser-Möst offered a crowd-pleasing program of works inspired by Italy.

A production which did not make a strong impression in Naples, despite a first rate cast. 

With Verdi's Otello, Music Director Robert Spano continues a recent Atlanta Symphony Orchestra tradition of presenting grand operatic works in a concert hall version

The National Theatre opens its new season with a Verdi favorite short on substance but lovely to hear.

Not a particularly revealing Falstaff, but a pleasing performance though. Maybe one would have expected something of greater impact from a festival like this one, but that goal had already accomplished by Graham Vick with his Stiffelio the night before...

Without recourse to virtual reality or hallucinogens, Vick has created a suggestive, vividly surreal world where one's reference points are lost to the wind.

McDermott envisages Aida as a sister production to his team's mesmeric Akhnaten. But would the hypnotic juggling and glacial choreography work for Giuseppe Verdi's Nile epic?

Verdi voices that make one sit up and listen made this a memorable matinee.

An able cast sings in Christof Loy’s non-interventionist and insightful production of Verdi’s panoramic tragedy, conducted with vivid detail by Michele Mariotti.