Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Canada

On the final leg of their North American tour, the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Mahler proves a a transformative experience within the intimate setting of Toronto’s Koerner Hall. 

The Barber is back in Toronto with an excellent cast, young and old, and it’s as lively, colourful and energetic as ever. 

Christopher Alden’s Victorian-era Rigoletto still divides opinions, despite top-notch performances all around in this Toronto revival. 

Virtuosic Alina Ibragimova joins the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal for a dynamite performance of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, while youthful conductor Hankyeol Yoon leads polished Rachmaninov. 

The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM), conductor Rafael Payare, and violin soloist Simone Lamsma joined forces in a program that featured seminal works by two musical titans who settled in the United States after fleeing Europe in the mid-twentieth century.

Conductor Glass Marcano and pianist Tony Siqi Yun reimagined familiar works in a scintillating performance with Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain.

Sarah Dufresne shines as Gilda in Glynis Leyshon’s gloomy staging of Rigoletto, set in Victorian London. 

A gamut of Nordic moods and colours are elicited in this all-Sibelius programme comprising the Violin Concerto as well as the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies.

Matthias Goerne and Daniil Trifonov take their Toronto audience on a Schubertian journey to remember at Koerner Hall. 

The restrained beauty of Robert Carsen’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is matched by musical elegance in its revival current revival at the Four Seasons Centre. 

Stepping in to replace Stephen Kovacevich, Jonathan Biss’ Schubert alternates between insight and impatience.

Amy Lane’s production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the COC is eye-catching and enjoyable but doesn’t offer the same level of insight as her Faust last season. 

The Toronto Symphony kicks off the 2025-26 season with an intriguing and exciting double bill of the very new and the very familiar. 

Rafael Payare leads a fevered account of desire, damnation and sonic grandeur, ably supported by Karen Cargill and Andrew Staples. 

Kristiina Poska makes a successful Toronto debut with solid Beethoven and some spicy Caribbean fireworks from Stewart Goodyear. 

Robert Carsen’s 1997 production of Eugene Onegin has aged remarkably well but the latest Canadian Opera Company revival of it doesn’t quite recapture its magic. 

The British are coming! An exciting evening of Ravel and Vaughan Williams with conductor Andrew Manze and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor in Montreal.

William Kentridge's production of Berg’s Wozzeck has it all: wonderfully imaginative and disturbing designs, terrific acting and singing plus fabulous orchestral playing. 

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert, tipped for European touring next year, fails to convince.

Despite a rousing start the touring VSO produce some understated Brahms and Shostakovich at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. 

Tianyi Lu triumphs in her return to Montreal with a distinctive approach to Tchaikovsky's Fifth. Pierre-Laurent Aimard gives a spirited performance of Bartók's Third Piano Concerto.

In the first revival of National Ballet of Canada's 2022 Swan Lake, a strong corps de ballet and star turn by Genevieve Penn Nabity almost overcome a muddled visual concept. 

Thomas Adès serves up an astronomical programme, pairing his Piano Concerto and Paradiso with Holst’s crowd favourite, The Planets.

Alisa Weilerstein plays Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante before her husband conducts a key work from the OSM's history, Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé. 

Bilodeau and Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon is contemporary opera at its best, telling a great story with outstanding music and stunning visuals.

The Toronto revival of Michael Grandage’s straightforward but elegant production shields Puccini’s genius from contemporary critiques. 

Dalia Stasevska and Randall Goosby are sensational in a programme that featured orchestral chestnuts by Bruch and Dvořák. 

Contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux joins Kent Nagano for a program featuring the premieres of boldly disparate compositions by Matthew Ricketts and Aziza Sadikova. 

Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic bring their Year of Czech Music to a triumphant conclusion in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, where Daniil Trifonov raises the roof with Dvořák’s neglected Piano Concerto. 

Sarah Dufresne dazzles as Ophélie in Opéra de Montréal's Hamlet along with mezzo Karine Deshayes and the Orchestre Métropolitain conducted by Jacques Lacombe.

John Adams returns to Toronto to conduct the TSO in an exciting and varied programme marked also by the debut of Spotlight Artist Anna Prohaska. 

Amy Lane's scattered borrowings from Tim Burton to Stanley Kubrick fail to cohere in the Canadian Opera Company's new Faust.

Montreal-bred Karen Gomyo steals the show in Dvořák's Violin Concerto with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under guest conductor John Storgårds. 

The Canadian Opera Company’s season opening production is musically excellent, but the dated, dull production adds little. 

Gustavo Gimeno kicks off the TSO’s new season with new perspectives on the familiar and not-so-familiar

Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain launches its season with a Bruckner Ninth that includes both an orchestral introduction and a choral finale. 

The Toronto Summer Music Festival opens with Les Arts Florissants’ enchanting performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, featuring the singers of Le Jardin des voix and the dancers of Compagnie Käfig.

With the audience sitting on stage with the performers and in the choir loft, this feels like the kind of communal experience that Bach would have recognized.

Japan’s leading composer conducted a programme that mixes concert and film music, but it was only the familiar tunes that enthuse the audience.

Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony stir the emotions with a caring and dedicated performance of Mahler’s longest symphony.

Superstar dancer Carlos Acosta's Don Quixote debuts at the National Ballet of Canada, showcasing thrilling dancing in a sumptuous, sun-filled Spanish setting. 

French conductor Stéphane Denève leads the Toronto Symphony in an invigorating French-American programme, featuring Canadian star violinist, James Ehnes. 

The 27 year old Venezuelan conductor Glass Marcano impresses in music from Latin America and in Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. 

Fabien Gabel showcases his French music bona fides, while Katia and Marielle Labèque offer a trademark Philip Glass concerto with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. 

In the title role of Canadian Opera Company's Medea, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky offers the vocal and dramatic goods required by this flawed masterpiece. 

The TSO effectively combine new and old with a first rate performance of the enargeia suite by Emily D’Angelo, followed by a satisfying Brahms First Symphony. A fitting tribute to dedicatee Sir Andrew Davis.

Canadian Opera Company's Don Pasquale offers a stylish Italian 1960s Fellini-inspired concept that delivers  comedy but omits the pathos. 

A musical hero returns to his hometown with his Philadelphian orchestra in tow. 

Gustavo Gimeno leads the Toronto Symphony in a programme of absorbing musical abstraction and storytelling, let down by a banal new trombone concerto.

Osmo Vänskä’s visit to the Toronto Symphony brings an outstanding, dramatic new concerto from Detlev Glanert, while familiar masterpieces by Grieg and Sibelius spring to life with vivid freshness.