Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Metropolitan Opera

Yannick Nézet-Séguin led an intriguing performance of Wagner's Flying Dutchman at the Met with a superb orchestra and an excellent ensemble of singers. 

There are several things wrong with the new Robert Carsen directed Der Rosenkavalier that just opened at the Met, but the singing is not among them.

The evening was dominated by Anna Netrebko, who reprised the role of Tatiana with fresh insights and vocal charisma.  Robin Ticciati led the Met Orchestra to probe a new depth of the score.

The Metropolitan Opera’s now 29-year old production of Aida is still standing and still looking good.

The Met revived Beethoven's only opera Fidelio with a strong cast and excellent chorus and orchestra, with a production that celebrates liberty and love.

Mozart's Idomeneo proved to be a challenge for some of the soloists initially but the superb orchestra under James Levine brought about a successful opening evening at the Met.

About halfway through the second act of Verdi's La traviata at the opera's second Met performance of the season, soprano Sonya Yoncheva went from being a really good Violetta to being a great Violetta.

From the moment he stepped on stage as our ill-fated title character, Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo seemed as if he may burst at the seams. 

As it turned out, the second performance of the Met’s revival of I puritani was the one to see – it offered some of this season’s greatest singing – and a surprise.

The Metropolitan Opera's new produdtion of Rusalka fails to explore a deeper complexity of the fairy tale, although a strong ensemble of singers and the superb Met Orchestra make it a musically compelling performance.

The gambling tables and neon lights of Las Vegas might not be the images which immediately enter your head when you think of Verdi’s Rigoletto, but bold art is often created and progressed by the pushing of boundaries and by challenging audiences to reimagine the familiar.

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.

Elijah Moshinsky’s 15-year old production of Verdi’s Nabucco has returned to the Met, ostensibly as a vehicle for Placido Domingo.

The Met revived Jurgen Flimm's modern production of Salome, with Patricia Racette making a successfu last minute role debut in the title role.

Conductor Susanna Mälkki, in her Met Opera debut, led the Met Opera Orchestra in a limber performance of Ms Saariaho's gorgeous music, the first woman-authored score to be heard at the Met in 113 years.

Anna Netrebko scored an unmitigated success in her first Manon Lescaut at the Met, almost obliterating director Richard Eyre’s and designer Rob Howell’s misconceived production.

The return of the Met's Aida was a joyous celebration of the art form with excellent singers and orchestra doing what they do best against the backdrop of a traditional but effective staging.

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.

Olivier Tambosi’s controversial production of Janáček's Jenůfa first appeared at the Met in 2003.

Fabio Luisi conducts a solidly cast Guillaume Tell with panache, Rossini's final opera returning to the Metropolitan Opera after a long absence. 

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

Simon Keenlyside returned to the Met after absence and led a delightful cast of Don Giovanni at the Met.

Director Mariusz Treliński’s previous work at the Met, in conjunction with Boris Kudlicka’s sets and Bartek Macias’ videos, was a double bill of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle.

An amiable revival of John Dexter's Die Entführung at The Metropolitan Opera makes Mozart’s Singspiel accessible and genial.

Little mark of Shakespeare's drama or Verdi's passion behind Bartlett Sher's exsanguinated, highly-stylized Otello for The Metropolitan Opera.

The late director Patrice Chereau's last work, Elektra, was brilliantly realized at the Met, with special credit to conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soprano Nina Stemme.

The Met brought back a 20-year-old traditional production of Simon Boccanegra with a starry cast led by James Levine.

Sondra Radvanovsky tackles another Donizetti queen - Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux - at The Met. 

Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly is still one of the best productions running at the Met at the moment, and Kristine Opolais was the dramatic star of the evening.

A revival of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Met, where Vittorio Grigolo's Nemorino happily ignores most of Bartless Sher's subtexts. 

Led by phenomenal performances by tenor Javier Camarena and his superb colleagues, Met's Don Pasquale was a joyous occasion to celebrate Donizetti's late Opera Buffa.

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

The Met's new production of Manon Lescaut with Kristine Opolais and Roberto Alagna has great potential to be successful musically, but the production is mixed at best.

A brilliant revival of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda at The Met centres on the dramatic confrontation between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart at Fotheringhay. 

The Met’s revival of David McVicar’s year-old take on the perennial Verismo twins strikes out emotionally in Cavalleria rusticana but scores high in Pagliacci. Working on the same set by Rae Smith, flanked by the forbidding stone walls of the town church, Cavalleria is dark, dark, dark – the very picture of a poor, unhappy Sicilian hill town.

Les Pêcheurs de Perles is a graceful if senseless piece, composed when Georges Bizet was only 25 years old and miles away from the psycho-musical drama of Carmen.

Despite starry bel canto experts such as Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and maestro Michele Mariotti, a 2013 Paul Curran staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago reads vacuous on The Metropolitan Opera stage.

The Met's brought back its Die Fledermaus set in the turn-of-the-century Vienna in a glittering production with a winning ensemble of singers.

In addition to incorporating twelve-tone rows for each character and within larger musical units like canons and chorales, the entirety of the opera itself is palindromic in structure, with performers whose characters died gruesome deaths during the first act returning as new characters in the third.

Franco Zeffirelli's admired 1987 Turandot honored Giacomo Puccini's chinoiserie fantasy about a cold-hearted princess thawed by love, but musically lacked conviction.

Does it really matter where an opera is set? These days, this question seems to trail Rigoletto. 

The Met brought back its traditional staging of Tannhäuser with remarkable performances by the Orchestra, Chorus and soloists, with two outstanding male singers.

David McVicar's six-year old production of Il trovatore returns to the Met with a starry cast:a model of clarity and mood compared with the Met’s previous staging.

The Met's Turandot remains a grand spectacle, worthy of the opera itself, with a cast rightly earnsing the wild ovation it received.

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.

Bartlett Sher’s new production of Verdi's Otello opens the Metropolitan Opera's season in a staging dominated by multimedia sets.

A bearded lady and her taxidermied shark are just two eccentric characters livening up Stravinsky’s 1951 moral fable The Rake’s Progress, though the shark is unique to Jonathan Miller’s revived production. 

The Met's new production of Cav and Pag boasted strong musical performance, but its production, despite some interesting ideas, was not completely successful.

Placido Domingo was "suffering from a bad cold" on Saturday afternoon, so baritone Luca Salsi, scheduled to sing Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor later that night, put on the costume and delivered a convincing last minute Don Carlo in Verdi's Ernani.

Great singing from veterans and some visually stunning effects light up the Met's revival of Hytner's 2010 production of Verdi's Don Carlo.