Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Mikhail Petrenko

Michele Mariotti and Johannes Erath lead us into the caverns of Il tabarro and Bluebeard’s Castle with two stories of violence against women 

Five highly dissatisfied lead characters find only disastrous or ambiguous outcomes. Yet there are few greater operas than this.

In Khovanshchina, even more so than in Boris Godunov, the chorus is the chief protagonist and the La Scala chorus was truly astonishing.

"She commands the stage, she commands the notes, she commands the tension": Christine Goerke's portrayal of Elektra haunts The Met. 

This was a performance that had you lickng your lips for Santi’s return next season with Zeffirelli’s time-honoured take on Aida.

The CSO’s season-long celebration of Prokofiev’s 125th birthday had its watershed moment with the composer’s monumental score to Ivan the Terrible.

Vittorio Grigòlo and Diana Damrau repeated and cemented their intense on-stage relationship at the Met in Bartlett Sher's new production of Roméo et Juliette.

Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Opera in a vocally strong Das Rheingold, a promising beginning to Edinburgh International Festival’s Ring in concert over the coming years.

The Cleveland Orchestra and Joffrey Ballet team up for staged performances of Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin and Bluebeard's Castle. 

Mozart’s beauty asserted but never implied, Sir Richard Eyre’s Le nozze di Figaro brings grand complications in bright turns and quick wit.

In a quirky programme featuring English, Welsh and Russian music the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales began their new season at St David’s Hall showcasing, with mixed results, their composer-in-association Huw Watkins, Elgar and three Russian composers at different stages in their careers.

The second opera of the Ring Cycle in Vienna brought the best out of the orchestra and singers with a sweeping and breath taking reading of the score by Sir Simon Rattle.

Vienna Staatsoper revived Wagner's Ring Cycle with a splendid orchestral performance of Das Rheingold led by Sir Simon Rattle.

The Met's première of Iolanta and Bluebeard's Castle, delayed by snow, opened with powerful singing and deeply effective staging. Iolanta showcased beautiful singing from the principals, while Bluebeard's Castle showed off brilliant playing by the Met Orchestra.

Valery Gergiev brings George Tsypin's Ring staging to a spectacular close with Götterdämmerung in Birmingham.

Valery Gergiev conducts a mesmerising account of Wagner's Siegfried in Birmingham

Mikhail Kazakov gives a compelling portrayal of the troubled Tsar Boris, as Gergiev and the Mariinsky provide a great showcase for one of the masterworks of Russian music.

Rachmaninov's The Bells proved the highlight of Prom 43, with fabulous soloists and huge choral forces who stole the show in the third movement.

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin invokes an unattainable glimpse of heaven in a uniquely crafted Verdi Requiem. 

Gounod's Faust returns after 45 years to the National Dutch Opera, and this new production directed by Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus, lead by a fine cast and conducted by Marc Minkowski is nothing short of spectacular.

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.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s return to the London Philharmonic, of which he is the Guest Principal Conductor, was as usual greeted with a full and enthusiastic concert hall. His strengths in the French repertoire and choral music made him the perfect conductor for an evening of music by Dutilleux and Shostakovich, whose Tout un monde lointain and Symphony no.

The world ended again last night. It ends fairly frequently in performances and in recordings, and that schedule tends to innoculate us against Richard Wagner’s political and philosophical messages. If ever there were to be a performance to transcend that, it would come at the Proms, at the conclusion of its first full performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

  Read our review of Stephen Wadsworth's production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.  

In einer packenden konzertanten Aufführung war Wagners Rheingold unter Yannick Nézet-Séguin vom Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra außergewöhnlich expressiv und mit exzellenten Sängerdarstellern in Baden-Baden zu erleben.

L'opéra de Moussorgski ravit dans toutes ses dimensions : orchestre coloré, baguette haletante de Paolo Arrivabeni, plateau très homogène et mise en scène aiguisée.

Le Crépuscule des dieux a lancé la dernière étape du Ring en version de concert à la Philharmonie, par Valery Gergiev et les artistes du théâtre Mariinsky.

Troisième épisode de L'Anneau du Nibelung en version de concert à la Philharmonie de Paris, par Valery Gergiev et le Mariinsky, six mois après deux premiers volets mitigés.

Die Münchner Philharmoniker brachten Wagners Fliegenden Holländer – gegen alle Widrigkeitenin – erfolgreich zur Aufführung.

Concert 100% Rachmaninov au conservatoire de Moscou, avec le pianiste Denis Matsuev entouré de la basse Mikhaïl Petrenko, du violoniste Gayk Kazazyan et du violoncelliste Alexandre Ramm. Interprétations spectaculaires s'il en est.

Interpretación vertiginosa y febril de la Novena de Beethoven, con una dirección de Gergiev profundamente caprichosa y un Orfeón sobresaliente.