Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Ana María Martínez

Peter Mattei's smooth-as-silk baritone leads a handsome cast in the Metropolitan Opera's bleak new production of Mozart's great dramma giocoso. 

Sir Bryn Terfel’s Falstaff is still a cherishable rogue as he takes on the title role in Robert Carsen’s joyous staging at the Royal Opera. 

Chicago's new Faust is a quest for youth but also a reflection on insipiration, fabrication and manipulation. 

Synergies between singers compensated for accurate but unexciting orchestral playing.

Dangling and turning like shards of a giant overhead chandelier in Don Giovanni’s banquet hall, this is an evocative multimedia production that tantalizes the senses while shining new light on Mozart's genius. 

Ermonela Jaho sure likes to put herself (and us) through the emotional wringer on Covent Garden's stage. This time, London finally got to see her as another tragic Puccini heroine: Madama Butterfly.

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.

A dream cast come true in Don Carlo at San Francisco Opera. Emilio Sagi's direction is the only weak link in this production.

Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, moving between the worlds and rooted in myth, is a shivering opera to experience with its opulent music and its fantastical plot. 

Zeffirelli excess and Woody Allen wit: Los Angeles Opera's season opens with a double bill of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Glyndebourne's season opener features an outstanding singing performance by baritone Igor Golovatenko, leading a strong vocal cast. However, staging and orchestral performance leave much to be desired.

Kristine Opolais offers a nuanced, moving Cio-Cio-San in a solid revival of Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s sepia and cream production of Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera.

This production's consistent visual beauty forms the setting for this Don’s musical approach. It is a testament to this ensemble that Mariusz Kwiecień can’t steal the show in spite of his utterly commanding physical and vocal presence as the Don.

Ana María Martínez takes on the title role as Dvořák’s nymph Rusalka in a new Lyric Opera production by David McVicar.

Amid red carpets and canapés, the Lyric Opera’s 2013/14 season opened on Saturday night with a work that perfectly suited the storm gathering above as ball-gowned luminaries swept into the hall: Verdi’s Otello, that late masterpiece of mood and terraced intensities.

The new Netherlands Opera performance of Richard Wagner’s only comic opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was an absolute success. Spanning a daunting four-and-a-half hours, the evening kept us wanting more rather than searching for the clock.

On Monday night – and, one might guess from the way the opera crowd gripped their collars as they swept into the Civic Opera House, the coldest night in Chicago this winter – a new La Bohème opened at the Lyric (it’s on loan from the San Francisco opera).

In the end, the big man gets the last laugh. Come to think of it, he also gets the first laugh, but for different reasons: you sense that Verdi steadily grew to love Falstaff in the course of writing the opera, as he turns from a coarse buffoon into a maligned old man and, eventually, into the spirit of laughter itself.

For over a century, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has been one of the most famous and widely staged operas in the world. The secret of this undying popularity lies in the complex and contradictive nature of the main heroine. Audiences always look for new vocal and dramatic interpretations of the character and keep their expectations high for the leading soprano.

 À Bastille, nouvelle reprise de Madame Butterfly dans la mise en scène historique de Robert Wilson. On adore ou on abhorre ; en tout cas, le plateau et l'orchestre font l'unanimité.

Cela fait près de vingt ans – et plus de cent représentations – que cette production de La Bohème, mise en scène par Jonathan Miller, ravit les spectateurs de l’Opéra de Paris.