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After a fifty-year absence from Roman stages, Verdi's opera about the Maid of Orléans makes an appearance at Teatro dell'Opera under the conduction of Daniele Gatti.

A promising cast on paper is scuppered by a banal, monotonous production and uninspired conducting.

Sir David McVicar's unassuming production fails to engage with the political side of Verdi's masterpiece, despite good conducting by Nicola Luisotti and some good singing by a solid cast. 

The Met's spectators love Mozart’s opera, but they deserve an updated staging.

Netrebko met the audience’s high expectations, as she does every time, conquering the challenges with her remarkable artistry. 

The Met's new season opens with a new Samson et Dalila only marginally more trashy than Saint-Saëns’ peculiar brand of kitschy orientalism.

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

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

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.

Muti's reading of the score is extraordinary, both for its sophistication and originality.

The finale was the dramatic and musical high of the night, when both Ana María Martínez and Mariusz Kwiecień let themselves cut loose, laying waste to the bare stage.

Elijah Moshinsky’s 15-year old production of Verdi’s Nabucco has returned to the Met, ostensibly as a vehicle for Placido Domingo.

The return of the Met's Aida was a joyous celebration of the art form with excellent singers and orchestra doing what they do best against the backdrop of a traditional but effective staging.

After being absent since December, music director Riccardo Muti returned to Chicago Symphony in a passionate account of the epic Roméo et Juliette by Berlioz.

The Lyric Opera put together the best-sounding première of the year so far, in which singers, chorus and the orchestra all began with astonishing confidence and only improved from there.

Verdi's take on the Joan of Arc story may be thin on drama, but outstanding playing from Riccardo Chailly and the La Scala orchestra and top notch singing from Netrebko, Meli and Álvarez make this a wonderful Verdian evening.

Re-imagining this opera with Prince Gremin as the show-stealer was no doubt a happy accident.

Houston Grand Opera’s season-opening production of the fiery opera does it right, from lighting to set to singing, and the end result is a stunning beginning to its season.

De Bosio's highly traditional reading of Nabucco takes blockbuster form, aided by Veronese architect Rinaldo Olivieri's sets, which are at once epic and pragmatic.

Visually traditional, this Norma often indulged on the most predictable aspects of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, unfortunately missing the opportunity of bringing a bigger audience to the theatre and showcasing the vastness of Italian opera. 

Placido Domingo was "suffering from a bad cold" on Saturday afternoon, so baritone Luca Salsi, scheduled to sing Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor later that night, put on the costume and delivered a convincing last minute Don Carlo in Verdi's Ernani.

Verdi’s Aida has been performed over 1,000 times at the Metropolitan Opera, making it the most commonly revived work after Puccini’s La bohème. Because Aida is so regularly programmed, I usually walk rather than run to see this opera.

Not everything worked in Gilbert's Beethoven Nine, but the stunning finale redeemed all.

Eugene Onegin: regrets, broken dreams and sorrow are perfectly rendered in this staging, as the callous dandy's icy heart eventually melts.

According to Riccardo Muti in a recent interview for Chicago Classical Review, the cardinal sins of modern conductors when interpreting Verdi are over-aggression and vulgarity. He also notes in an interview included in the concert program that one of the most unique aspects of Macbeth is its use of expressively soft dynamics, even going as far to call the technique avant-garde.

Apart from the precious Quattro pezzi sacri, Verdi wrote very little sacred music until this Requiem, probably due to his agnosticism. When Alessandro Manzoni, one of the most important and admired Italian literary figures, died on the 22nd of May 1873, Verdi felt that something in the Italian cultural world had come to an end.

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 title role of Bellini’s Norma is one of the most challenging roles in the female repertory. It has been called the most profound portrayal of womanhood in all of opera. It demands a dramatic coloratura soprano with immense vocal power, rare agility, a wide dynamic range, a broad palette of vocal coloration, and instinctive theatricality.

Iolanta and Francesca da Rimini work particularly well as a double bill because both works share the theme of lovers who find themselves at the mercy of possessive forces. Iolanta's domineering father ultimately yields in Tchaikovsky's opera, but in Rachmaninov's the deceitful Lanceotto is not so accommodating.

Wagners Oper und eine Kunstperformance von Hermann Nitsch finden am Grünen Hügel gleichzeitig, aber nicht immer aufeinander abgestimmt statt; musikalisch und optisch wird dabei aber durchaus Schönes geboten.

Menée par le trio Tézier-Kaufmann-Radvanovsky, une exécution musicale superbe confère à l'œuvre de Verdi toute l'émotion incandescente dont la prive singulièrement la mise en scène, signée Lotte de Beer.

Anja Kampe brilliert als Katerina Ismailova in Schostakowitschs letzter Oper.

Monumentalidad y grandes voces encienden la nueva temporada del Teatro Real.

C’est peu dire que la nouvelle production de Warlikowski, après les deux reprises qui ont ouvert cette saison de l’Opéra de Paris, était attendue. Promesses tenues.

Pour clôturer la saison, le théâtre du Bolshoï donne sa version de la Damnation de Faust de Berlioz, avec la complicité du metteur en scène allemand Peter Stein. Version respectueuse du livret et de la partition, qui cherche la beauté et la force expressive avant tout.

Un interesante y desigual sexteto de cantantes para la versión concierto de una de las obras menos representadas de Verdi.  

Chowanschtschina ist ein Gesamtkunstwerk, das an der Wiener Staatsoper nicht mit der Regie, doch mit musikalischen Leistungen besticht.

Stehende Ovationen für hochklassige musikalische Leistungen in Dmitri Tcherniakovs Produktion.