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Edward Gardner's conducting brings out the nuances of Berlioz's complex score, but The Met's concert staging lacks theatrical thrust.

Barrie Kosky's makes a limited impact in his debut at Opéra de Paris, apart from an hallucinogenic Polovtsian Dances.

Riccardo Muti conducted a stirring performance of Verdi's Requiem to mark the 30th anniversary of Karajan's death.

Outstanding vocal and orchestral performances light up La Scala's season opener, matched to a conservative but visually arresting staging from Davide Livermore.

Verdi's fifth opera can be considered a blueprint for Trovatore and deserves a more regular place in the repertoire, but it needs more sincere advocacy than Bechtolf is prepared to grant.

Cecilia Bartoli is joined by frequent collaborators Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier in a fun-filled Rossini farce full of Italian sunshine. Big grins all round. 

Despite a great cast, the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Semiramide bores with tacky costumes and no direction.

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.

Has Health and Safety finally caught up with the Spanish Inquisition? A flameless auto-da-fé and some low-key individual performances meant this revival took time to hit its stride. 

Tcherniakov's moving production delves into the psychological rather than revelling in the spectacular. 

Don Giovanni is an opera which has as its title character a man who is an unrepentant womaniser, who ultimately receives his just reward in one of the most famous scenes in opera where he is consumed into the fires of hell.

A winning ensemble of singers led by James Levine makes the revival of Rossini’s early opera a success.

In Anna Bolena, Sondra Radvanovsky plays a queen who loses her crown. But she approaches a different coronation: as the first to play three of Donizetti's Tudor Queens at the Met.

Stefano Poda’s deeply intellectual mis-en-scene immersed the bourgeois love affair between Marguerite and Faust in an abstract and transcendental tangle of philosophical, existential and liturgical motifs. However, an overflowing symbolism sounded sometimes academic, but the visual effects were suggestive if not properly enchanting.

After a six week hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera's new Le nozze di Figaro has returned, with a new cast and conductor.

The Met's revival of Carmen, with its rotating set, has a successful opening night with a strong cast, an insightful conductor, a superb orchestra and chorus, all working well as a team.

Richard Eyre’s witty direction may weight Figaro too heavily towards bedroom farce than satirical drama, but with sparky acting it’s difficult not to be won over. 

Anna Netrebko makes a glorious role debut as Lady Macbeth in a revival of Martin Kušej's jumbled production of Verdi's first Shakespeare opera.

Riccardo Muti conducts Verdi's Requiem in Madrid and forever changes the lives of the audience that witnessed in astonishment.

Even the best opera glasses would be no match for the intensity of this close-up introspection: a new production of Borodin's Prince Igor is playing at the Met.

The 91st season of the San Francisco Opera opened with a revival of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele in Robert Carsen’s well-traveled production. The staging extends Shakespeare’s metaphor: if the whole world’s a stage, then heaven, quite naturally, must be an opera house.

The Verbier Festival Orchestra is the centrepiece of the festival from which it takes its name. Hundreds of young players hoping to start a professional orchestral career audition each year for the chance to work with big-name conductors, the likes of which this year include Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and, for this concert, Gianandrea Noseda.

Don Giovanni is perhaps the most difficult of the Mozart–Da Ponte opera trilogy to stage. Not only is there the problem of how exactly the Don is to be consumed in flames at the end of its three-hour span, or the issue of how to make the statue of the Commendatore come to life.

On Wednesday night the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts was more crowded than a shopping mall during the holiday season. Apparently, nothing could keep DC opera lovers from getting to the Washington National Opera - not even the notorious peak hour traffic.It comes as no surprise that Mozart’s Don Giovanni, known to some as "the greatest opera ever written" is on most opera fans’ must-see lists.

Read our review of David McVicar's production of Donizetti­'s Anna Bolena in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Rossini's The Barber of Seville has been his most enduringly well-loved opera. It's in the top ten of operas performed worldwide today, and it has stayed at the top of the most-played lists even when many of his other works were little played.

Those who like their opera off-kilter will revel in the Metropolitan Opera’s Les Contes d'Hoffmann, an opera in three acts (with prologue and epilogue) by Jacques Offenbach. The Met production was heavily operetta à la Offenbach—risqué, and at times, erotic.

Read our review of Maria Zimmerman’s production of Verdi's Lucia di Lammermoor in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Boris Godounov pour la première fois à Bastille dans sa version originale de 1869. Casting excellent, mais la transposition dans l'époque moderne souffre de dissonances avec le livret et la musique de Moussorgski.

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.

Wie üblich beendete eine weiter konzertante Oper den Opernreigen der diesjährigen Salzburger Festspiele und in diesem Jahr war dabei Donizettis Attentäter-Drama Lucrezia Borgia zu erleben. Der Belcanto-Klassiker begeisterte mit mitreißenden Melodien und hervorragenden Solisten.

Carmen dans la mise en scène de Calixto Bieto, présentée actuellement à l'Opéra Bastille, dépeint une héroïne victime du machisme et d'un certain ordre moral conservateur, tout en affirmant sa nécessité d'indépendance et la légimité de ses désirs de liberté.

Viel Wirbeln und Drehen in Reinhard von der Thannens Salzburger Faust-Inszenierung: Sein weißes Bühnenbild verschmilzt mit den nuancenreichen Orchesterklängen unter der Leitung von Alejo Pérez. 

Puisqu’ils constituent, finalement, les soubassements autour desquels devrait s’édifier le reste du spectacle, autant saluer d’emblée les prestations vocales solides de cette année. 

Dass es nicht immer einer Inszenierung bedarf zeigte die konzertante Aufführung von Verdis Ernani unter leidenschaftlichem Dirigat von Riccardo Muti.

Dans le cadre des Nuits de l'Orangerie, Anna Netrebko avait concocté le 4 juillet un programme d'opéra italien quasi en famille, à destination de ses nombreux fans : ceux-ci n'ont pas été déçus.

De cette production, on ne gardera en mémoire que quelques belles émotions lyriques