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Chrisoph Loy's new Oslo production of Eugene Onegin only somewhat succeeds in its desire to create a meditation on loneliness, but superb musical performances still make it an utterly compelling piece of music theatre.

Despite some dramatic frustrations, at least in Oslo, Jones' production is saved by some truly outstanding singing.

The first staging of Bellini's Norma in Oslo in over a century is unfortunately hampered by an irritating production, yet some glorious singing does much to rescue the show.

Christoph Loy's Oslo production of Wozzeck is a dramatic triumph, with gripping performances from a cast led by Audun Iversen's desperate title character.

François de Carpentries' Oslo production of The Barber of Seville was both unfunny and underwhelming. 

Calixto Bieito's Tosca, despite an intriguingly modern setting, fails to make sparks fly.

After over a century, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande finally received its Norwegian première in a fascinating production by Barbora Horáková Joly.

The revival of Calixto Bieito's Carmen in Oslo proves a bumpy ride, with uneven singing and orchestral playing, saved by Katarina Bradić's captivating portrayal of the title heroine.

With his first foray into Rossini, Norwegian director Stefan Herheim turns La Cenerentola into a brilliantly funny spectacle, filled with thought provoking humour and outstanding singing.

Despite occasionally brilliant singing, the Norwegian National Opera fails to raise seasonal spirits with a dramatically inert Cavalleria rusticana and a shaky Pagliacci.

Despite an excellent cast and some glorious singing, Stephen Langridge's oft-revived 2012 production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly never quite takes flight. 

Calixto Bieito's staging of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is violent, shocking and uniquely powerful.

Director and choreographer Jo Strømgren's production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice brings together ballet and opera, but succeeds only with limited results.

Looks can be deceiving in this beautifully sung revival of Thaddeus Strassberger's Oslo production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Andreas Homoki's 2004 Turandot makes its way to Oslo, but fails to impress with less-than-halfbaked concepts and underwhelming singing.

Ole Andreas Tandberg's production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk gets a revival in Oslo, and proves even more chilling than the first time around.

Rolf Wallin and Mark Ravenhill’s new opera Elysium tackles fundamental questions about humanity itself, and largely succeeds. Despite slightly uneven music and libretto, the performers shine in this sci-fi opera.

Director Ole Anders Tandberg's production of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse expertly balances the line between irreverent humour and human tragedy.

Calixto Bieito's production of Carmen attempts to humanise the title character, but in doing so leaves the rest as caricatures.

Willy Decker's gloriously sung production of Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová in Oslo made for a uniquely powerful performance.

Strassberger’s production of Don Giovanni raises interesting questions about modern society and our relationship with religion. Unfortunately, this production lacked focus, but is redeemed by occasionally glorious singing.

François de Carpentries’ Oslo production of The Barber of Seville is back for its fourth revival. The singing ranges from the uninteresting to the outright excellent, but the production can still provide a thoroughly entertaining evening at the opera.

Tatyana Gürbaca's new production of La traviata in Oslo may be on the heavy-handed side, but still offers fascinating new insights into Verdi's opera.

Director Johannes Erath sets Wagner's Lohengrin balancing on a knife edge between fantasy and reality in a beautiful, thought-provoking and magnificently sung production.

Jüri Reinvere's new operatic adaptation of Ibsen's immortal drama is a decidedly uneven experience, but not without potential.

Theodor Strassberger's Oslo production of Mozart's Don Giovanni offers a fresh, mostly well-sung take on an old classic.

Calixto Bieito's production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann is astoundingly sung, but suffers from excessive cuts and occasionally odd direction.

Calixto Bieito's The Tales of Hoffmann at the Norwegian National Opera contains some very effective and at times striking moments, but the production turned out something of a disappointment overall.

The world ended yesterday. Possibly. It probably didn’t, but the facts are still kind of fuzzy.György Ligeti’s only opera, Le grand macabre is a strange piece. The story is straightforward enough: Nekrotzar, a Death-like figure, travels around the world of Breughelland warning its citizens of impending doom – a giant comet will destroy Earth at midnight.

Entering the Norwegian National Opera for their season opener of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, I imagined it would be a pretty conventional production and was hoping for some good singing. Turns out, I was only partly right.

For his fourth production for the new Oslo opera house, Norwegian director Stefan Herheim turned his attention to Richard Strauss’ one-act opera Salome. This production is a co-production with the Salzburg Easter Festival (where this production premièred in 2011) and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Nothing says “Happy Easter” like a bit of alcohol-fuelled murder on the church steps, right? With their new double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the Norwegian National Opera certainly seems to think so!The two productions were done on practically the same sets, albeit with a few differences, which did create a rather wonderful sense of continuity from the fir

What do you get when you mix an old man with a penchant for younger women, a young woman, her equally young lover and a scheming doctor, and set it all sometime around the 1960s, although you wouldn’t really know it had it not been for the petticoats? A rather successful night at the opera, it would seem.

Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia is, as the title implies, not an easy opera subject-wise. It is based on André Obey’s play Le viol de Lucrèce, which in turn is partially based on Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. This was Britten’s third opera, and the first of his so-called chamber operas, operas with small orchestras and small casts.

Vincenzo Bellini’s operas are not among those that are played most often in Norway. This Saturday’s concert performance of I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Norwegian Opera in Oslo was the second ever to take place in Norway, the first being a concert performance in the Oslo Concert House back in 2001.

When one thinks of Haydn, opera really isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the symphonies, the string quartets, even his oratorios you think of first, not his operas. And yet he wrote 15 of them. L’isola disabitata is the eleventh of the bunch, written for the Eszterházy court in 1779, and it was this opera The Norwegian Opera and Ballet (DNO) chose as their 2012/2013 season opener.