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The Cleveland Orchestra’s centennial season was off to an auspicious start with an encore presentation of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen.

Zambello's Ring for the WNO continues to engage and impress. 

Zambello's Die Walküre engages and excites in this promising Ring cycle. 

Das Rheingold stages flawed American Ambitions in the first Ring Cycle in Washington DC. 

Opéra de Montréal's belated première of Strauss' take on the Greek tragedy is worth the wait, as soprano Lise Lindstrom and wunderkind conductor Yannick Nézét-Séguin lead an exciting, music-driven production.

The bright colours and childishness of Konwitschny’s production for the Bayerische Staatsoper shock but succeed. The cast and orchestra shine, especially in the final act.

Adrianne Pieczonka and Anett Fritsch shone in an otherwise disappointing opening night, impaired by poor conducting and unimpressive staging.

A safe performance of Poulenc's extraordinary opera in Washington, lacking in pity and terror.

Alan Held and Martina Janková star in a technologically and musically stunning production of Leoš Janáček's fable of nature and time.

The Canadian Opera Company has judiciously chosen a real chestnut (La bohème) and a more complex if less popular work, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, for its fall season. The latter is given a well-sung and directed production despite some faux pas in the set design and the characterization of Grimes by tenor Ben Heppner.

After a concert last week made inaudible by thunder and a very heavy rain storm, The Cleveland Orchestra and its music director Franz Welser-Möst returned to Blossom Music Center this past Saturday in much more auspicious circumstances – a gorgeous, warm, non-humid evening – for a generous helping of excerpts from the operas of Richard Wagner, in celebration of that composer’s bicentenary.

Peter Sellars successfully updated the ancient magic in Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner had already modernised the medieval tale by focusing on the middle of the story, where the passion of the doomed lovers catches fire. Wagner treats the mythic origins of the romance as back-story recollected while passions are flaring.

Between acts, and between shows, the stage at Chicago’s Civic Opera House is usually blocked from view by a solid mural painted with baroque figures in gold – perhaps the gaudiest feature of an already fussily ornate hall. The gilt-painted screen was up, however, for Elektra, the first show of the Lyric Opera’s new season (along with Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, which runs concurrently).

Most of Dvořák's ten operas are rarely performed, but Rusalka, his tragic fairy tale of the water nymph who takes human form, has become popular in recent years and is a regular visitor to British opera houses. Last night's production, by directors Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, started life at the 2008 Salzburg festival and has now arrived in Covent Garden.

Even though, unlike most American opera lovers, I am not a big fan of Puccini’s music, Tosca has a very special place in my heart. Set to the most heartbreaking and overwhelmingly beautiful music, this story of a classical love triangle ending in the three deaths never gets too old or too boring.

Read our review of  Richard Jones' production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Christian Räth präsentiert eine enttäuschende Inszenierung von Webers romantischer Oper voller übertriebener Klischees.

La magnífica producción de Elektra creada por Patrice Cheréau llega al Liceu bajo la dirección musical de Josep Pons, que al frente de la orquesta del teatro y junto a las voces de Herlitzius, Pieczonka y Meier recrean con gran éxito una de las parituras más bellas del s. XX.