Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Alain Coulombe

Bilodeau and Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon is contemporary opera at its best, telling a great story with outstanding music and stunning visuals.

Sarah Dufresne dazzles as Ophélie in Opéra de Montréal's Hamlet along with mezzo Karine Deshayes and the Orchestre Métropolitain conducted by Jacques Lacombe.

Against the Grain's production of Vivier's Kopernikus is an immersive and thought provoking realisation of the composer's late Opera – rituel de mort. It's music theatre of a rare intensity, brilliantly executed. 

An aesthetically handsome but cold and distant staging mars the long-awaited return of  Eva-Maria Westbroek as Puccini’s heroine at Dutch National Opera.

According to director Sven-Eric Bechtolf,  Don Giovanni’s divine retribution for a life of pure evil and insatiable fornication is just more of the same.

The set is a stark, grubby nonentity. A central concave structure spits out each scene's requisites, flashing up like apparitions from the vortex of Wozzeck's mind.

The auditorium's lights flared up, drawing a blinking audience back into the room. The fourth wall was well and truly broken, and each of us was given no option but to acknowledge our responsibility for the planet.

Manon was not only central to Jules Massenet’s claim to international celebrity after its creation in 1884, it remains at the heart of the operatic repertoire and Massenet’s popularity today. Manon returned to the stage of L’Opéra de Montréal on 18 May after a lengthy absence to close the company’s 2012/13 season.

Seuls l'excellent baryton James Westman dans le rôle-titre de Nabucco et l'impressionnante tenue du chœur ont sauvé la dernière production de l'Opéra de Québec.