Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Residentie Orkest The Hague

Artist-in-Residence Bomsori Kim joins Jun Märkl for a new chapter in the history of the Residentie Orkest, The Hague. 

Inspired by Annie Ernaux’s The Years, Philip Venables’ new opera widens the canvas to take in the whole of Europe’s postwar generation. 

After a seven month delay, Willem Jeths' new opera finally receives its long awaited world premiere in front of a live audience.

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

Robert Wilson's Madama Butterfly is back in Amsterdam starring rising star Elena Stikhina as the doomed Cio-Cio-San.

Top tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres dared to duel at the Concertgebouw. Both emerged victorious, and not just because of the volley of sensational top notes.

Gifted conductor Andrea Battistoni and a vocally seductive cast made this revival of Benedict Andrews’s flawed La bohème a musical triumph.

Mohammed Fairouz’s second opera, The New Prince, premiered in Amsterdam, is directed by Lotte de Beer as a colourful, dizzyingly fast-paced  revue.

After showing in 13 theatres around the world, Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des carmélites returns again to Amsterdam, where it was premiered in 1997. Almost 20 years on, its finale remains a shattering theatrical experience.

L’étoile at the Dutch National Opera, directed by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Patrick Fournillier, is bubbly and light like a glass of sparkling wine, to be consumed without restraint. 

Under conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, the Residentie Orkest presented an exuberant programme of perennial favourites including Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Ouverture, Chopin’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with soloist Wibi Soerjadi, and Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7.Rouvali opened the programme with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, a seascape which the young Finnish conductor evoked with fluid gestures.

The Netherlands Opera’s revival production of Prokofiev’s L’amour des trois oranges is sweet, juicy, and just a bit bitter in the right moments.This production presents Prokofiev’s piece in the original French with Dutch and English supertitles. At its first performance in Chicago in 1921, Prokofiev’s opera was presented in French rather than Russian. French is a sensible choice for this region.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is an incredibly popular work – and with good reason. Tonight, this exciting piece was combined with works by two other Russian greats: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture and Tchaikovksy’s Piano Concerto no. 1, played by Nikolai Lugansky.

In 2010 Xian Zhang debuted as a conductor of The Hague’s Residentieorkest to rave reviews. Her performance tonight definitely justified those reviews, she and the orchestra were on excellent form.

Das außergewöhnlich gute Sängerensemble trägt diese aussagekräftige Opernvorstellung bei ihrer europäischen Premiere.