Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Deborah Humble

After its Bendigo Ring, Melbourne Opera brings off another artistic coup with a fabulous performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Melbourne's splendid Royal Exhibition Building. 

Wotan's predicaments provide Sydney's victory: Chief Conductor Simone Young has her musicians on some of their best form in recent years, with only a few question marks over an excellent concert performance.

Can a perfect performance of the stupendous Gurrelieder be anything other than five stars?

An icy Götterdämmerung brings Opera Australia's Ring Cycle to a successful conclusion, with standout performances from Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Andrea Silvestrelli as Hagen.

The second part of Opera Australia's Ring Cycle sees digital effects employed with greater restraint, delivering a production that is by turns moving and thrilling. 

The opening Opera Australia's much-delayed Ring cycle contains wonderful visuals, and a standout performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich, but also moments of bafflement and excess.

Melbourne Opera maintains the high standard of its all-Australian endeavour to the very end in a triumphant Götterdämmerung.

Melbourne Opera's Siegfried continues the dramatic excitement and first class singing of it predessors in the Bendigo Ring cycle, including a great performance of the title role by Bradley Daley. 

A strong opener to Melbourne Opera's all-Australian complete Ring, the first to be performed outside a state capital, in the regional Victorian city of Bendigo.

Joining Music Director Jaap van Zweden were some familiar faces who had appeared in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in the same or different roles, and new faces appearing for the first time.

Saffron Opera Group's opening salvo bodes exceptionally well for their planned full cycle of concert performances of Wagner's Ring over the next two years. 

Singapore’s amazing Orchestra of the Music Makers presents Mahler’s “Gift to the Entire Nation,” his massive Eighth Symphony, as part of the celebrations marking the country’s 50th anniversary as an independent state.

Earnest singing and dramatic insight made Das Rheingold with the Hong Kong Philharmonic a remarkable evening. 

I have always been skeptical of concert performances of operas. Operas are written to be acted, and the staging is needed to complement the music. This is what I thought before I saw this performance of Ashkenazy conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is an extraordinary opera, an often underrated masterpiece of the 20th century. On the face of it, it has a simple plot – the protagonist Paul, unable to overcome the death of his wife, falls in love with another woman, Marietta, similar to his dead wife in many ways.