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

Christine Goerke gives a thrillingly fleshed-out performance as the princess Turandot that is everything one wants opera to be.

When it comes to the title role, Bartlett Sher's non-interventionist production misses the core of the character. 

The Met succeeded in casting two strong singers for the difficult lead roles of Puccini's final opera. 

The Metropolitan Opera’s now 29-year old production of Aida is still standing and still looking good. Gianni Quaranta’s gigantic sets – floor-to-sky-statuary, regal-looking staircases, a couple of horses, wise/exciting use of the stage elevator to change scenes (causing, unfortunately, a glitch the other night which delayed the final scene for a few minutes), costumes (by Dada Saligeri) mostly of

The Met revived Beethoven's only opera Fidelio with a strong cast and excellent chorus and orchestra, with a production that celebrates liberty and love.

William Kentridge's Lulu for ENO is easier to admire than it is to love. But if you want to be challenged dramatically, this is the opera to do it.

Samuel Barber's Vanessa, with a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, is rarely staged, but Santa Fe makes a tremendous case for the opera. 

Little mark of Shakespeare's drama or Verdi's passion behind Bartlett Sher's exsanguinated, highly-stylized Otello for The Metropolitan Opera.

Franco Zeffirelli's admired 1987 Turandot honored Giacomo Puccini's chinoiserie fantasy about a cold-hearted princess thawed by love, but musically lacked conviction.

The Met's Turandot remains a grand spectacle, worthy of the opera itself, with a cast rightly earnsing the wild ovation it received.

Great singing from veterans and some visually stunning effects light up the Met's revival of Hytner's 2010 production of Verdi's Don Carlo.

James Levine led a solid and at times excellent performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Otto Schenk's traditional production that somehow lacked sparkle and excitement.

When the Met estimated the timing for Norma, Bellini’s familiar bel canto opera included in their fall repertory this year, they did not factor in the ongoing applause for soprano Sondra Radvanovsky.

Military service brutalises. If you’re in any doubt about this, Berg’s short opera Wozzeck should dispel them, and particularly so in Carrie Cracknell’s new production for ENO.

On Friday, a new co-production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg opened at the Lyric. The only comedy among Wagner’s mature music dramas, its sound is very much like that of the better-known tragedies – brassy, overfull, with a core of strings teetering at vibrato’s edge.

Read our review of Renée Fleming's production of Verdi­'s Otello in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

If you believe that true happiness can be found in music, I have a recipe for you to follow. Take a funny story of disguise, sham and mock marriage and set it to great music. Add a quartet of bel canto stars (a lyric tenor, a coloratura soprano, a baritone and a bass) and dress them in spectacular 17th century costumes. Add pantomime artists, masked dancers and a chorus.

“Off with their heads!” I vividly recall being terrorized as a preschooler hearing Walt Disney’s sadistic, loud-mouthed Queen of Hearts thunder these signature lines. I have since learned that decapitation as capital punishment is not exclusive to the fictional Queen of Hearts of Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, but rather grim historical reality.

Read our review of Giancarlo del Monaco's production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leise's production of Ambroise Thomas­'s Hamlet in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.