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

After its Bendigo Ring, Melbourne Opera brings off another artistic coup with a fabulous performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Melbourne's splendid Royal Exhibition Building. 

Così fan tutte is a fun-filled night at the State Opera of South Australia, well cast and continuously entertaining without sacrificing musical or vocal values. 

Melbourne Opera maintains the high standard of its all-Australian endeavour to the very end in a triumphant Götterdämmerung.

Simone Young  is made of stern stuff. With 30 hours to go before the concert performance, her Leonore falls ill. Can the show go on? 

Rossini's opera is all about art and art lovers in this production by Damiano Michieletto.

A successful concert performance of Umberto Giordano's verismo hit in Sydney, with a trio of international stars. 

Graeme Murphy's new Madama Butterfly opens with arrestingly kinky imagery and heavily exploits digital projections thereafter, but the joy of the production is in the uniform excellence of the performers, headed by the outstanding Karah Son in the title role.

A much-loved 1991 production evoking Fellini’s post-war glamour and grime is revived with three talented young principals, including Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the title role.

Gale Edwards' Opera Australia staging of Richard Strauss' bloody opera is revived with Lise Lindstrom in the title role. 

Amber Wagner delivers a thrilling performance in Opera Australia's revival of Graeme Murphy's Turandot – a spectacular feast for both the ears and eyes.

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour returns with La bohème, in a fine production by Andy Morton, with star turns from Iulia Maria Dan and Ho-Yoon Chung in the lead roles.

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

Director John Bell's chosen associations for his Carmen with Strindberg's Dance of Death and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf underlined an emphasis upon the fated couple's joint knowledge that nothing they can do will turn the tsunami that's leading to their deaths.

Would Britain enjoy 'The Rabbits'? For that's how the new Australian family opera allegorises the colonial Poms who came to this Terra Nullius  Downunder, denying the existence of the native Aborigines - appearing as Marsupials in this opera. 

In his director’s note, Jonathan Biggins writes, ‘All I can hope for is that you go out of the theatre feeling a bit more cheerful than when you came in’. If that was the opera’s aim, then few could claim that it was not successful in achieving it. The ABC’s Limelight magazine describes the production as ‘a razor sharp, satirical romp that’s camper than a row of tents and twice as funny’.

Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, written some ten years before Carmen, does not enjoy as much recognition as the latter opera. Composed at the age of 25, the opera received harsh criticism from many contemporary critics, although not from Hector Berlioz, who clearly recognised something of Bizet's genius in the work.