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

With her signature role’s coloratura fireworks and dramatic nuance, Jessica Pratt’s Sydney Opera House debut is one to remember.

Remarkable singers and magnificent sets successfully transpose Puccini’s Tosca to Nazi-occupied Rome, bringing home the horror of tyranny and how possible it is to occur.

The quality cast purred, but glorious roars are required to jolt audiences from placid enjoyment of Opera Australia’s gorgeous 24-year-old production of this Verdi classic.

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour returns with La bohème, in a fine production by Andy Morton, with star turns from Iulia Maria Dan and Ho-Yoon Chung in the lead roles.

Massanet’s Don Quichotte is mounted by Opera Australia, in a production which creaks but is held together by fine singing from Ferruccio Furlanetto and Warwick Fyfe.

Kosky’s The Nose hits Sydney, sweeping the audience along with hallucinogenic energy. Led by the outstanding Martin Winkler and John Tomlinson, singers and musicians deliver a wild evening's entertainment.

An outstanding cast headed by Karah Son in the title role provides a fitting send off for Opera Australia’s much-loved production of Madama Butterfly in Sydney

As clearly visible on all photos, the Sydney Opera House has two “sails”, interconnected major sections. One of them houses concerts, the other operas. Opera performances, however, are not exclusively taking place in the Opera Theatre.

Outstanding performances from Nicole Car and Etienne Dupuis turn Opera Australia's unstaged production of Thaïs into a triumph at Sydney Town Hall.

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

Splendid performances and a Nazi makeover turns Puccini's political tragedy into a visceral experience.

It's the libretto's equivocation that has denied King Roger the frequency of performance that its music deserves.

Damiano Michieletto's inspired intertwining of the standard double-bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci makes for vivid storytelling, the whole supported by an excellent cast solidly directed by Andrea Licata.

The final instalment of the Melbourne Ring is vividly brought to life by excellent singing, an adaptable set, and committed playing from the pit.

A combination of ingenious sets, truly heroic singing in the title role by Stefan Vinke, and excellence throughout the rest of the cast makes the Melbourne Siegfried an unmissible highlight of the Ring so far.

On a night of technical delays and extraordinary singing, Opera Australia's revival of Die Walküre is particularly memorable for Amber Wagner's Sieglinde and Lise Lindstrom's Brünnhilde.

The revival of Neil Armfield's Melbourne Ring is relaunched with a successful Rheingold, sensitively conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with an especially fine performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich.

What a delight to revisit this 60th anniversary production of My Fair Lady in the directorial hands of its original Eliza, Dame Julie Andrews. 

Verdi's most political opera feels particularly relevant in 2016, and the Opera Australia production convinces, thanks to the outstanding George Petean in the title role and an excellent supporting cast.

Not just a jolly romp through the inconstancies of the heart, Sir David McVicar takes Così fan tutte through a dark lesson for lovers while leaving the music ravishingly intact.

A revival of Francesca Zambello's production of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges at the Sydney Opera House is a joy, thanks to the antics of Kanen Breen at the head of a strong cast.

Director John Bell's chosen associations for his Carmen with Strindberg's Dance of Death and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf underlined an emphasis upon the fated couple's joint knowledge that nothing they can do will turn the tsunami that's leading to their deaths.

Chinese dragons, Dalek-like pagoda towers: Opera Australia's harbour-side production of Turandot did not shy away from oriental imagery, leading to a spectacular evening's entertainment.

A relative rarity by Verdi is given an outing at the Sydney Opera House, with excellent performances let down by a disappointing staging. 

A well-worked revival of Elijah Moshinsky's production of Rossini's Barber of Seville offers gales of laughter and vocal delights at the Sydney Opera House, with starring roles for Paolo Bordogna, Anna Dowsley and Warwick Fyfe

Would Britain enjoy 'The Rabbits'? For that's how the new Australian family opera allegorises the colonial Poms who came to this Terra Nullius  Downunder, denying the existence of the native Aborigines - appearing as Marsupials in this opera. 

Beautiful sets and a fine cast led by Guillaume Tourniaire can't quite compensate for the dramatic weaknesses in Opera Australia's new production of Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles.

Julie Taymor's production maintains the magic of The Magic Flute at Sydney Opera House. 

The ever-popular La bohème returns in Gale Edwards' adaptation which features a change to the final months of the 1930s Weimar Republic as featured in the musical Cabaret.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos has finally arrived, for the first time in the 21st century, as a much anticipated highlight of Opera Australia’s current season. 

Plush costumes and lavish sets make up for shortfall in music and singing in Opera Australia’s La traviata. 

While the billboard advertisements focussed on the presence of the ‘hit aria “Nessun dorma”’, there was much else to enjoy in this Turandot revival in Sydney: a lively, rich production and a strong cast headed by Lise Lindstrom and Yonghoon Lee.

Camels, fireworks, and a gigantic head of Nefertiti: the Sydney Harbour production of Aida is not short on spectacle. Among the cast, Latonia Moore is outstanding in the title role, with good support from Miljana Nikolic as Amneris and Michael Honeyman as Amonasro.

David McVicar's production of Faust enjoys one of the strongest overall performances of Opera Australia in recent times.

Opera Australia’s Falstaff in Melbourne brings freshness to this almost 20-year-old production. Contributing to its success is an outstanding Falstaff...

One’s upbringing to respect the elderly is challenged in a farcical, not so far-fetched family matter in Opera Australia’s Don Pasquale.

The aftermath of an unfortunate tug of war between love and lust entwined in a city gripped by enemy occupation, Tosca’s story digs deep into the human heart. 

David McVicar's Don Giovanni for Opera Australia takes its cue from the brutally grim opening of the opera, yet remains true to Mozart’s own description of a “jocular” work (dramma giocoso). 

On Harry Kupfer's dramatic set, strong performances by Simon O'Neill (Otello), Lianna Haroutounian (Desdemona) and especially Claudio Sgura (Iago) make Opera Australia's Otello a memorable revival.

Rigoletto contains some of Verdi’s greatest melodies, and Opera Australia’s new production brings out the mixture of passion and darkness the heart of this story.

Àlex Ollé's harbour production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly for Opera Australia is attractive and thought-provoking, with strong performances from Hiromi Omura and Georgy Vasiliev.

Kasper Holten's innovative production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin comes to Sydney, with Nicole Car outstanding as Tatyana.

Dmytro Popov and Nancy Fabiola Herrera star in a traditional production of Carmen at the Sydney Opera House.

Opera Australia's laugh-out-loud production of Il Turco in Italia (“The Turk in Italy”) by Rossini at the Sydney Opera House combines vocal excellence and strong characterisation.

‘To lose one singer, Mr Terracini, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two, one of them in the title role, looks like … a disaster’. Such were the thoughts running through my head when the Artistic Director of Opera Australia made the pre-performance announcement.

I left the Sydney Opera House last night feeling vaguely dissatisfied, and yet a bit puzzled at my dissatisfaction. La Traviata is chock-full of Verdi’s most glorious music, and well though I know the score, I wasn’t feeling in the least jaded to begin with.

In a sense, the plot of Don Pasquale is timeless: it concerns an old man who comes between young lovers and meets his comeuppance.

I’ve never been to a sing-along Sound of Music, but apparently audience etiquette requires pantomime booing of the Nazis. More than a few attendees at the opening night of Opera Australia’s new production of Tosca responded in a similar fashion at the curtain call, and it had nothing to do with a generally excellent performance. For yes, there were Nazis.

Destiny, Fate, Providence: different ways of describing the sense of an external agency shaping our ends. Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, based on a Spanish play by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, is a sprawling tale in which the characters’ lives are irrevocably shaped by a fatal accident.

There can be fewer more idyllic places in the world to see an opera. Behind the floating stage was Sydney’s harbour bridge and opera house; to the left, the lights of the central business district; and to the right, the glittering lights of the Northern Shore and the occasional ferry making its way to Circular Quay.